


Klarion's Curse

by ilyena_sylph, Merfilly



Category: DCU - Comicverse
Genre: Age Regression, Alternate Universe, M/M, Multi, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-25
Updated: 2008-05-14
Packaged: 2017-11-02 12:10:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 29,755
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/368835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Merfilly/pseuds/Merfilly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slade hunted the wrong witch, and gets an interesting curse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Continuity falls toward the end of 52, beginning of One Year Later. This is a fic about second chances, and the canon involved is taken from many sources, then warped into place by writer fanon. Originally posted on livejournal in late 2006/early 2007.

"Wrong person to mess with," the startlingly thin waif said, idly stroking his cat. The mercenary turned and fired in one smooth motion, just before his entire existence began to unravel. "No one hunts Klarion, bum BUM bum, the Witchboy."

`~`~`~`~`

Dick was barely settled in from a night that had included a party with the pretty girl down the hall and a fight with a small go gang of bikers. He was both tired and sore when the sound of a sharp rapping on his door intruded. Irritably, he strode over and peeked out, growing a little less irritable and more puzzled when he had to look down to see a boy in the hallway, wearing clothing that seemed…antiquated. The boy's hair cut, the way his clothing looked out of place, even his shoes just painted an image of a bygone decade.

He opened the door, meeting the startling blue eyes of the boy.

"Dick Grayson?" The boy's voice was hard, suspicious, and he radiated both anger and a hint of trepidation.

"Yes?"

"I don't know why I'm here, who you are, but I could not fight this…need to come here. Since I didn't recognize anything else anyway, I'm hoping you can tell me why." The boy stood there waiting.

"Who are you?" Dick asked, wondering who had played a prank this time.

"Slade Wilson."

`~`~`~`~`

After getting the boy in, winning some level of trust, and getting the details as thoroughly as possible, Dick had settled the boy with food. Once his stomach was full, the child, who was apparently ten years old, thought the world was a fiction straight out of Astounding, and believed the year should be 1948, had fallen asleep with his head on his arms at the kitchen table.

Dick had moved the boy to his own bed, touched despite himself at the entirely too innocent picture of the blond boy burrowing into a pillow with the blanket pulled tight. He had to give credit to the kid; he had evidently spent a day or two getting to Dick, with little sleep and less to eat. Even at ten, Slade had apparently been a tough cookie and a survivor.

A phone call to Jason Blood followed Dick's initial freak-out. And revealed that the entire magic community knew what had been meted out to the successful assassin at the hands of their young Warlock. Klarion's affection for age magic had stripped Slade from everything he had built himself into, but shown a touch of compassion by driving Slade to the one contemporary person held in the assassin's mind as most capable to help him.

Dick Grayson. Who got off the phone with Blood, had a tiny breakdown of 'what in hell…' before calling the person he most relied on for support.

Which was Roy Harper.

Who proceeded to laugh himself sick at hearing Slade's fate, before eventually getting it under control and coming over. Amidst a few more snicker fits, Roy laid out all the options he could see, and let Dick mull them in his own time.

What it all boiled down to was responsibility. And, as Roy had pointed out, shaping the child that was into something far better than the man he had become.

Which left Dick looking for ways to balance his life against a sudden instant Daddy syndrome. 

When he stood in his bedroom door, though, he felt he owed it to Joey, to see that this man got a fair start with his remade world. If Dick were a good enough man, the hero community would inherit a fighter with tremendous raw potential, even if Slade never was cursed to the meta side of what he had been.

`~`~`~`~`

It took exactly one week for Dick to realize his calm acceptance of raising Slade Wilson as his… ward was not going to work. He had not even gotten to the point of talking to Rose, let alone Bruce on the matter. Because one week from Slade showing up on his doorstep, they discovered the small print on what Klarion had done.

Slade had gone to bed, Dick had gone out on patrol, and then come home. Just like every night but the very first one.

Except Slade woke him up well before the typical rising hour of noon. A slightly taller, definitely older Slade, to be exact. One who announced he remembered an entire year's worth of experience he had not the day before. Dick had groggily gotten up, and placed a phone call to Jason Blood.

Which led to a short visit from the man, and confirmation that the spell had a very specific condition set.

Every week, the boy would gain one year's growth and memory of his life as it had been lived already. And this would continue until Slade either reached his proper calendar age, and was shaped explicitly by those memories regained, or…

Jason had been forced to turn aside, trying to control the Demon within, who was awash with honest merriment at the curse thrown by Klarion. Dick's demanding questions went unanswered at first, until Jason was finally able to speak without fear of the Demon's rhymes on his lips.

"He will age until he meets his fated age…or he chooses to belong as he is, with one who catches his heart." Jason swept out then, glad the boy had left after the initial interview was done, and leaving Dick to stew over his words.

And stew he definitely was. //Klarion you little punk I swear... wait. if he keeps... oh, no. Oh, hell no. but... how do I... how can I even make an impression, if I've only got a few weeks... okay. Slade was mid-thirties or more by the time the army gave him the serum, but... it has to have run deeper than that... and that's what I've got to fight if I've got any chance of trying to make him into more than just Deathstroke...// 

That, of course, was the point his ethics decided to try and bite him in the ass, questioning what right he had to deliberately alter the course of someone's life so radically... and he ruthlessly told those ethics to stuff it. Something had happened to make this kid an assassin, and it damn well wasn't going to happen again, not if he could change it. Which meant going and talking to the kid. Probably talking to him a lot.

He finally surfaced, and went looking for him. "Slade?"

The boy was sitting on the front stoop of the building, his ball glove (where in the world had he gotten it?) to one side of him, with a baseball in it. "Yes sir?" 

Dick's skin crawled at hearing that from Slade, physical reaction he could barely restrain, and he tilted his head at him, determinedly not asking about the glove, or the ball. "You know you don't have to call me that. How're you feeling? Kind of a wild morning..."

"Figure it works for me in the long run, sir." Slade seemed to be using manners, so common to kids of his day and age, as a shield against liking Dick at all, or warming to him. In explaining about heroes and villains, Dick had not convinced Slade that he was a hero like the JSA of his memories…until Dick introduced him to Wildcat and Flash to prove the point. Only then had Slade grudgingly admitted Dick might be the hero he claimed to be. "I'll know the truth of who and what I became."

Dick bit his lip, trying to figure out the best way to respond to that. "So sure that's what you want?"

"Look, Mister Grayson," Slade started. "You told me some magician waved his magic at me, and made me back into a kid, but left me with this urge and half-map in my head to find you. You turned out to be a hero…but I can't help but shake the idea that we were not friends. Which means the reason you won't tell me how we knew each other is because we were on different sides of the ball field."

"We were... a lot of things. You taught me... but yeah. There were times we came up against each other, too. That's why I'm asking if you're so sure you want to remember. You're a pretty good kid." //And there's a lot of hell in your past.//

Slade looked up and down the street, noting the lack of kids outside. He had been able to find a few to run with, but not for long, and they all seemed so unfit…he remembered only knowing maybe two heavy kids, and he knew he had seen at least seven in Grayson's building alone. The technology around him, the sleek lines of the cars, the grim air of the city itself all pressed in on his mind. 

"It's not my world, not like this. Feel like John Carter might have when he first landed on Mars…but I'm nothing spectacular like he was." He shrugged. "Something says I might have grown up to be something to reckon with though."

Dick smiled slightly, "...you could say that. I know it's not your world... but it's the one we've got."

Slade showed the early potential that had likely led to his inclusion in the Army's test programs. His ears caught the barest hint of an inflection on the _we've_ and focused intently on Dick.

"Me not becoming what I was has some real pull on you."

Dick snorted. "That to anyone that thought you weren't whip-smart on your own." He dropped to sit on the steps a bit away from him. "Not going to lie to you. Yeah, it does."

Slade considered that for a long minute. "Doesn't stop me from aging. Or knowing what I should already know." There was a hint of that temper, the anger that sometimes boiled too close to the surface, normally so tightly leashed.

"Sure doesn't. Doesn't sound like there's much that can, from what Jason said." //Unless you fall as hard for someone else as you did for Addie...// "But you don't have to make the same choices you did the last time around. You really don't. Hell, there's one big one that you're not going to be able to make... And honestly, I'm scared of what it will do if you have to live through the memory of it again." 

Slade's eyes narrowed, the crystalline blue of them piercing in a face so young. "If you're not going to say the full story, Mister Grayson, I would prefer you not speak of it at all."

"It's no story for a kid's ears, kid, but I'm telling you as much of the truth as I can... and there's a lot of it that I don't know anything but second and third hand. In case you hadn't noticed, I'm not that old... and you were never fond of talking about your past." 

"Someone has to know," Slade said evenly. "But, it's not worth a fuss." He shrugged. "Every week, I get a piece back. If it's 2006, then in a little over a year, I'll know everything I ever did before. And I bet I can see the puzzle in half that time."

"I'm not taking that bet. I know you." //Wonder how long it took him to do that math?// "You're right, it's not worth fighting over... especially because I really do just want what's best for you. Keep that in mind, would you?" 

The boy gave him a sharp, appraising look that intimated the concept of waiting and seeing quite ably. "Sure thing."

"Good enough." Dick wasn't ruffled by the look in the slightest--he'd seen it from a single, harder eye too many times. "Once upon a time, I threw a mean fastball. It's been a while-" //wing-dings totally don't count// "-but I think I can still manage. Want to go hit the park?"

"You won't be in much shape to go out tonight if you don't get some sleep." Slade smiled slyly. "And that girl from down the hall mentioned you were invited to a party." The prepubescent Slade was just at the age to really start noticing the pretty girl from down the hall.

"Wouldn't be the first time I've run short on sleep," Dick shrugged. "And I'm too damn awake now. Dealing with Jason's always stressful..."

"Strange man," Slade said by way of agreeing. "Figure you gotta be, if you have power."

Dick laughed, grinning in amusement. "That? Is absolutely true. So, shall we?" The boy picked up his glove and the ball, earned from another kid in exchange for showing him the right way to throw a right cross, and walked with Dick to the nearest park. As they walked, Slade recognized more and more of the alien things that set his teeth on edge, from the litter to the graffiti to the general attitude of the people. He was not sure what had happened, but nearly sixty years seemed to have changed the victorious United States into a place less bright, less promising.

Dick watched him tensing, and eventually reached out to lay a hand on his shoulder. "There're still plenty of good people doing their best here," Dick told him, fierce belief in his voice.

"And yet you have to go out every night. Old men, men who were the heroes on the radio news the first time I did this are still out there having to fight for good." Slade's voice was chiding, sharp. "It's an ugly place."

"Sometimes it is," Dick agreed. "Some horrible things happened, between your time and now... but all we can do is try. Keep trying... All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing... I'm never going to do nothing." The boy considered that, his mind turning sharply over the good men that had left to fight distant wars, so many of whom had not come back. His mother was a strong willed woman, had kept up the home and raised them right, but he knew she had both been proud of and upset by his father's choices.

"Doing nothing isn't for me," he said almost too softly to be heard.

Dick's hand squeezed his shoulder. "No. It wouldn't be." //So how did you turn into him, Slade?// Oh, he knew how. One too many betrayals, denials, the hell of the war had all played a part... //If I can just keep you thinking like that, maybe this'll turn out okay after all...//

`~`~`~`~`

The ringing of the telephone was not the intrusion Dick wanted as he studied a modern American history book. It had seemed like a good idea, to refamiliarize himself with the events that would have been the environment Slade had grown up in. 

He leaned and picked it up, "Grayson."

"Dick." It was a tightly controlled voice, one that was young, female, and very much trouble for Dick in who it belonged to.

"Good morning, Rose." He closed his eyes, setting the book aside. "What's wrong? Wonder Girl giving you trouble again?"

There was a long pause, one he learned meant Rose was trying to decide if she really could trust him. She then forged ahead, revealing that she had maintained some contact with her father.

"I can't reach my dad. At all…and he never goes this long without answering one of my messages."

//Fuck. ShitDamnHell.// "Will you leave it alone if I promise you that there's a good reason for that and that he's safe?"

Rose made a growling noise. "No."

"I didn't think so," he sighed, and got up to pace. "Look. He's okay--or at least uninjured, but no, you can't get in contact with him."

"He's my father, Dick! I've been trying to reach him, trying to make him see he's got to stop the insanity!" The girl was talking in hushed, clipped tones.

"Good," Dick told her, nothing but approval in his voice. "I know, Rose, but just trust me, okay. Right now, you don't have to worry about that."

"Dick…" Her tone was dangerous, hovering in that range that argued against her continued sanity if he pushed.

"Look. Go get Raven to tell you what Klarion pulled, and stay away. I mean it, Ravager."

"I'm not done with you," Rose growled over the phone before hanging up to go do just that. 

Dick dropped his head into his hand, sighing as he shut the phone off. He was just thankful Slade had been outside, running around with some of the kids he had chased up this week. The boy was very athletic, and Dick had found him twice coming back from Wildcat's gym, where he was being persuasive about learning to fight.

Which Dick wasn't objecting to. Wildcat would put not only skill, but sense into the kid that just kept closing himself further off, no matter what he tried. 

About three hours later, he heard very urgent knocking on his door…actually, the tempo was more of a demand. //Damn it, Rose Wilson.// He got up and walked over, pulling the door open.

"Where is he?" Rose glared at him with irritable anger. "And don't say you don't know; Raven confirmed he had come to you before bringing me to New York."

"Down at Wildcat's, where hopefully he'll stay for a while. Get inside." He got out of the way and jerked his head at her. She stepped inside; at least she had come in civilian clothes, though the bag at her side said she was prepared to go active if she had to. 

"What are we going to do about this? Where in the hell is this Witchboy so I can kill him? After he fixes this!"

"You go hunting Klarion, you'll wind up as bad or worse as he did, Rose. And you're not going to kill him." Last questions first. " I'm doing the best I can to take care of him... god, it's weird."

Rose dropped onto his couch, obviously stubbornly set on seeing for herself. "Tell me. Explain why you did not think it necessary to call me when my only living relative has just had his entire life fucked with."

"Because either he's going to keep on aging right on up to the point where he remembers you in a few months, or something's going to happen to stop it and he's never going to, and I don't know which one it's going to be. I'm scrambling, trying to even keep up with the references he uses, let alone cope with the entire thing, and the last thing that twelve-year-old kid needs is his seventeen-year-old, half-blind daughter trying to shove herself into the middle of this. Think about it if it was you, Rose, your kid, someone you've got absolutely no memory of walking into your life all of a sudden."

She tilted her head to one side at the half-blind comment, hair falling away from the white patch she was using today. "So we don't tell him that part. And what do you mean? Tell me about the aging or not thing."

"Jason had to fight Etrigan to tell me, but he said, "He will age until he meets his fated age…or he chooses to belong as he is, with one who catches his heart."" It was an uncanny echo of Jason's voice, because Dick couldn't stand to say it in his own. "He's smart, Rose, he'll see we're hiding something--and he's pissed off enough at me already that I won't tell him everything." 

Rose looked thoughtful at what Dick said. She reached up, playing with her hair for a moment, before looking at Dick shrewdly.

"Then let Wintergreen tell him."

Dick's eyes widened at her, "WHAT?"

She reached down into her bag and fished out a CD case. "Wintergreen's journals. I brought them, thinking maybe we'd need some help at seeing the way Dad thinks. Dad did tell Wintergreen a few things of his past, and they're on here."

"Thought that was all lost when--" he shook his head hard. "Rose, remember that comment about trying to coax him back? We've got a shot at it, now... but I don't know how much difference I can make in the few weeks I've got, when he's recovering a year every week... It's weighted pretty heavy the other way... and I can't help thinking it's utterly wrong to shove the past of a seventy-something man off onto a twelve-year-old kid, Rose, that's why I've been mostly keeping quiet..." he was eying that CD like it was a snake.

Rose sighed softly. "I may not know Dad the way he knew us…but he won't trust a man holding back information. That much I do know as true for him, and it had to have been something he got early in life." She snorted. "One of his traits I share."

"Yeah, trust me, I noticed."

She slipped the case back into her bag. "I'm staying in New York until this is resolved. You will keep me updated?" She matched his gaze evenly, looking mature for once, and mostly sane.

"Yeah, I think I can handle that much. You set already?" Knowing her, she'd accessed one of her father's bolt holes.

She smiled. "Of course I am."

"Alright." He stood up to walk her out. "Rose... any way I could read those?"

"Maybe one day." Rose gave him a smile and left quickly…and ten minutes later he was glad of it. Slade came in, looking pleased with himself.

"Just saw a real pretty girl leaving…prettier than the one you talk to," he told Dick. At twelve, he was developing a strong appreciation for the feminine sort.

Dick couldn't help grinning. "Yeah. Rose's something else. I hear she's got her eye on my little brother, too." Tim, of course, was flatly denying any possibility of it.

Slade snorted at that. "Seems your brother should give up. Most of the girls I see around here know how to get what they want." Of course, he did not fully approve of some of the methods he had already observed.

"Yeah, but he's kind of the stubborn sort. You look... pretty happy. Good day at the gym?" The guarded look came back over the boy's face as he shrugged.

"Yeah." At least one more year had knocked the 'sir' and 'Mister Grayson' out of Slade.

"Good. Ted's a good teacher." //Damn it.// "Look, would you tell me where I screwed up so I can fix it?"

"I don't know what you mean," the boy answered him without a trace of guile. He then walked into the kitchen to see what they could eat for dinner, ending his willingness to talk.

Dick ran a frustrated hand through his hair, shook his head, and tried to figure out if he should push the issue or not. He heard the boy working his way through getting everything ready to cook, a talent that had also come with the new year of knowledge.

That gave him something resembling an entrance. "Want help?" Need help, of course, would get a no and one of those glares that was still so strange to see from two eyes.

"You could see if the dishes are dry in there." He pointed to the dishwasher. "I went to the library today." Slade volunteering information often did not bode well.

"And?" Dick went over to rummage through the dishwasher, //when did he load it?// and start pulling things out to put away.

"I learned how to use the computer database there," he continued, his voice sliding eerily into the quiet, casual tones Deathstroke had once used while giving Dick 'lessons' in the midst of their battles.

"Should've figured it was only a matter of time," Dick said, equally quietly.

Slade continued to cook, as at ease with the utensils of the kitchen as he had ever been with weapons. "Why did you not tell me?"

"Why should I tell a twelve-year-old kid what a forty-year-old man chose... or was driven to... do with his life? It's a long damn way away, and you're not guilty of it yet."

Slade gave him a look that implied a deep struggle to contain his temper. "Because, I will eventually be that man again. No matter what you do, every year I get back gives me every experience, every memory. It pushes my choices exactly as I made them the first time." He looked back at the thin strips of steak in the skillet. "Unless I actively choose to ignore the past I relearn. And why should I?"

"That what you want to be? Someone whose name engenders hate and fear? I don't know what changed in you between now, and twenty years in the service, but... You've got a second chance the way most people never will. Why should you waste it, is just as good a question."

"Seems I apparently lived up to my potential, if I was that good at it," Slade said with a trace of conceit.

"That depends on how you look at it. You were one of the best fighters I ever went up against, or learned from... but then, you were nothing but a hired gun, too. Such a fucking waste..."

Slade's eyes narrowed as he looked at Dick, at hearing that kind of language from the man he was living with. He expected it from the punks at the gym, even knew the language had shifted in what was more common, but Slade did not like the implication of how much emotional weight Dick had placed in his forced rehabilitation.

"I guess we'll just have to see." The line was delivered with every drop of coldness he could imagine. Right now, Slade could not remember being angrier than when his father had come home, three years after the war ended. His mother had died not long after, and the man had married a woman Slade thought was so far beneath what his mother had been that Slade had not spoken to him for weeks. He was considering taking the same option against Dick, except weeks would put him into his late teens. There was too much potential information in his benefactor to try that tact. "Many would say a man's fate is set in stone."

"I don't buy that. Everyone's got options. And what you'll remember and what's happening around you are two pretty different things.... Sorry, kid. Not the first time you and I've had that fight, and I let it get to me."

"Don't keep hiding things from me," Slade said, the twelve year old voice already approaching the steel that was there when Dick first met him. "You want to show me a better way? I need to be able to compare things honestly."

Dick sighed. "I don't know a damn thing about who you were at this point, other than what I'm seeing from you right now. I didn't meet you until so much had happened to you..." //Addie, Grant, Joey... Terra.//

"But you know that. What you want me to avoid becoming." Slade removed the strips from the heat and started fixing two plates. "But every week that ends, it's all I can do to process all the memories, and what I've done here in this time…means very little in face of that."

"How so? The older you get the more difficult it'll get, yeah, but..." //Right. Memory techniques. Dig them out of your brain post-haste.//

"I go to bed, and then when I wake up, I feel like I only just did every single strong event in my head from the year I gained." He held out his arm, pushing his sleeve back, to show the jagged scar left by a compound fracture. Dick had seen that one, much faded, on a far older arm, but now it was still pinkly fresh. "It's physical too."

Dick winced at the sight, "Surprised you slept through that. What'd you--never mind. I'll see what I can dig up to try and help you cope with that... if anything. It's obviously not over-writing the current memories... are you--how difficult is that to handle?" He was worried, damn worried, now.

Slade considered, even as he slid Dick his plate and took a seat their at the breakfast bar. "It is what I think an actor might experience. One who plays a role for many years. He has his life, but he knows the life of the character he plays nearly as well."

"Huh... not a bad way to look at it, I guess. Whatever's helping you cope, anyway." Dick settled near him, took a neat bite, and smiled. "This is really good." //What made you learn this so young?// One of those questions he just couldn't ask.

Surprisingly, Slade heard the question and chose to answer it. "Mom died last year. Dad's new wife wasn't much of a cook, and carrying, besides that." Slade had hated every attempt of hers to cook, given the German cuisine. Though given the months he could remember with her, he had to admit he might have judged her a little too harshly during his grief for his mother 

"I'm sorry." He meant it, too. Hard for any kid to lose their family. //Carrying... Wade.// He'd heard those stories, and carefully kept his expression to the honest sympathy.

"I just wished Dad had stayed dead. We had been better off without him." It was said as a matter of fact, not an emotion to be heard in the words; at twelve, Slade had already known the trick of hiding his heart. How could Dick overcome that, before Slade became the same amoral killer?

"You'd have been alone. And foster care's not a good system, probably wasn't even then." His own skin crawled at the memories of before Bruce had managed to come for him.

Slade's eyes said what he would not, that the foster system never would have held him. "I didn't feel the physical changes," he added, addressing that part of their conversation. "I just wake up and find the scars, feel a little sore here and there."

"Nice of the smug little brat," Dick muttered, looking back at him with that same knowledge... and wonder about what would have happened then before he closed it away. That was one might-have-been that simply wasn't going to happen.

"Tell me about this Klarion." Slade invited the discussion with an even voice, not seeming to hold a grudge.

"Obviously, he's a witch. "The Witch Boy", he calls himself, and he's from Witch-World--he doesn't belong here, but we can't seem to get rid of him. He's... very powerful, from all accounts. He loves age magic, for some reason, particularly turning adults into kids and kids into adults. Did that to a bunch of the heroes, once. He's petty, shallow, capricious, generally unprincipled and a royal pain."

"And yet skilled enough to handle a man that had, from what I could find, death sentences on him from nine countries, over two hundred warrants outstanding, and the enmity of the press and your hero community," Slade mentioned, showing he had taken to the computer age quite easily.

"Like I said. A royal pain. That cat of his probably told him you were coming, and he doesn't need long to spell cast. Why do you think we haven't managed to be rid of him?"

Slade inclined his head. He focused on his meal, then looked up at Dick. "Teach me."

Dick tilted his head slightly, then nodded. "All right." A voice screamed from the back of his head about the utter stupidity of making this man better, but he shoved it down. The more time and hooks he had to use, the better things might turn out.

`~`~`~`~`

In three weeks, Slade was scary good. He could keep up with Nightwing on the worst of nights. The only night he wouldn't go out were the nights that brought a new year to him, like this one. When he woke, he was going to be sixteen, and even without Dick's nervousness, he could suspect it was a pivotal year for him.

So he was none too happy when he came out of the kitchen to see a boy not much older than himself coming out of the hidden passage.

Tim's eyes narrowed, watching this blond-haired stranger like a hawk as he tried to figure out why in hell Dick hadn't warned him he had someone in the apartment... of course, it might have helped if he'd actually contacted him in more than the last week. //Shit. Play it cool.// He arched an eyebrow at the kid, very thankful he'd changed as usual, and with all the confidence of knowing he belonged and was welcome here.

Slade's eyebrow went up, as he walked with a grace that was part Dick and part…oh so familiar to Tim, over to the couch to sit down.

"Can I help you?" The voice was just deep, not fully resonant yet, lacking maturity and usage, but definitely settled.

"Maybe. I was looking for my brother, but since I haven't been tackled yet, I think he must still be out." //Who are you who are you, What, Dick, you're taking sidekicks now? didn't you learn the first time, who are you?//

"He won't be in for at least another…hour." Slade had made it clear he did not like to be…coddled or messed with on the nights of his regained years. He had intended to have a small snack and go to bed, to be asleep before Dick got in. 

"That sounds about right for a normal night," Tim agreed, and flicked a small comm out of a pocket. "R to N."

"Yeah, lil bro? Lil busy at the moment..."

"Think you want to wrap it up so we can talk." He kept his eyes on the blond kid, who was using the remote control to look at the television with the sound on mute.

"Yeah, why? Where are you? You could come join me if you're close..."

"I'm at your place," Tim said neutrally.

//Aw, shit.// "I'll be back shortly." The comm went dead and he headed back, shaking his head. //Just what didn't need to happen.// 

While he waited, Tim watched the stranger warily, trying to pick out what it was that seemed so damn familiar about him.

"Dick on his way back?" Slade asked, a slight smirk tugging at one side of his lips.

Tim nodded once, forcing his body down out of the ready state it wanted to stay at into something more 'normal'.

"Well then." He tossed the remote to Tim, stood in one fluid motion, and turned to go back toward the bedrooms. "Enjoy your talk…Tim."

Tim's eyes narrowed at him as he caught the remote easily. "It's possible." //How the hell do you know my name, Dick I'm going to kill you.// The teen moved down the hall with that insanely familiar grace, that impression of power leashed by a strong will. He paused once, turning in profile to be sure Tim was staying in place, and Tim thought he had seen that profile before.

//Who. The. Hell. Are. You?// 

It wasn't much longer before Dick stuck his head out the secret door. "Get back in here." 

Tim clicked the TV off and went to the passage, a million questions crowding into the basic concepts to begin with. "What are you doing? Who is that kid? Why does he know my name?"

"Evening, little brother. Breathe, would you?"

Tim scowled briefly, then let Robin take over his face. "Evening. Answers, please."

"He knows your name because I talk about you. You, not Robin; if you've blown that, it's your own fault. What I'm doing... I'm fighting Fate. Really damn hard. And as to who the kid is... apparently Jason didn't tell Bruce. Huh. How interesting..."

"Bruce is being Batman full time again, because Selina's baby is colicky." How one related to the other was a deduction only Tim would have made, but it made sense in its own warped way. "Who.Is.He."

"Slade ran into Klarion, and his usual sense of black humor landed me with trouble." //Oh, Bruce, not again.//

Tim's eyes bulged just slightly. "That kid is…" He shook his head. "Dick, are you insane?"

"Maybe. But right now he's a fifteen year old boy trying to catch up with a world that he barely understood two weeks ago... and god, Tim, the potential he's got..." 

Tim stared at him like he had grown a pair of horns. "Listen to yourself, Dick! He's got you wrapped up all over again!"

Dick stared back at him. "I'm not letting him go back to that without a fight, Tim. Not now, not ever. Not as long as there's a chance I can make a difference."

Tim was frustrated enough with Dick to run a hand through his hair. "Sociopathic tendencies are ingrained by age eight, some say by five, like language patterns," Tim pointed out. "So, you're fighting a lost cause. And letting him work you, because he always has!"

Dick crossed his arms at him, shaking his head. "You think I don't know the signs, Tim? They're not there--and no, I'm not overlooking them because I don't want to see them, they're not there. Some of the ruthlessness, sure, and a certain disregard for little things like laws... but, pot, kettle, Robin?" Responding to that last wasn't worth the effort. 

Tim's eyes narrowed. "This is why Rose took a leave of absence, isn't it?" Which, in Tim's world, meant danger to her as great as what he saw in Dick's future.

"Yeah. She's around somewhere, staying out of sight."

Tim reached for his gear. "This is going to bite you, Nightwing. Big and hard."

"Maybe. Maybe not. But I can't not try..." //C'mon, Tim, you've got to understand that...//

"You wouldn't be you. But we're keeping a distance. I won't tell B, but he won't come around, either," Tim said, readying to leave.

"Good. Thanks. Hey... what was up?"

Tim rolled his eyes. "Weren't you listening? Helena is colicky." He glared at Dick. "At the manor."

"..oooh. Oh, dear god. Want me to book you a hotel room for a couple of nights? Or you could just take the couch..."

"I'll find Rose." He could raise her on the Titans' band. And he knew she'd take him in. Not that Dick needed to know that, or what they might wind up doing.

Dick chuckled softly. "Sure, Tim. You go do that."

`~`~`~`~`

Slade was quietly eating a bowl of cereal the next morning. He looked up as Dick came in, nodding briefly. He had the shoulders, some of the height, but had yet to begin to feel out. "What you worried about? Must be next week's treat. Happened between six and seventeen, I guess."

Dick had frozen in the doorway, heart in his throat and pain in his eyes. //God. He looks SO much like Joey...// He tried to make his voice come out normally, "I didn't say I was worried..."

Slade's eyes narrowed at the reaction. "Look like you've seen a ghost, Dick. What is it?"

"One of those things I really wish you wouldn't ask about," he replied, cursing himself for an idiot as he forced himself into motion to go get a drink.

"Then you shouldn't scream pain with your body and face," Slade said, bracing himself. "Tell me why seeing me at sixteen makes you flinch."

"You look... so much like Joey. I should've known you would, should've been ready for it." The teen listened, heard the softness in the name he said.

"This Joey was a friend of yours…and someone to me?"

"He was one of my best friends. And a Titan. A good one, too... and he was your son."

That fact mulled around in Slade's mind, darkening his eyes as he metered out Dick's reactions, his language. "Was."

//Damn me for agreeing not to keep things from you.// "You said I looked like I'd seen a ghost. You weren't far wrong."

"What happened?" The teen was already concerned by the fact his own flesh and blood, a concept that shook him deeper than he cared to admit, had been on the other side of things from him.

"A lot of really complicated things that you'd have to know a hell of a lot of Titans' history to understand. It sounds insane even to those of us that were there... but by the time he died, it was a mercy." 

Those blue eyes read Dick like a book, just like the one eye had done since they had first met. "You didn't think so at the time."

"I wanted to think there was another way. That we could have saved him. I was wrong." Later events had proven that beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Slade nodded slowly, not fully understanding, but accepting Dick's word. He did not yet have the frame of reference for understanding the mercy killing, given when he went to war, or for hesitating, wanting a different way, a lesson Slade had learned hard with his wife's death.

"Well, guess we have another week before I start becoming the man you don't want to see," he joked blackly. "Any other kids? Nieces, nephews?"

"No nieces or nephews that I know of. Doesn't mean a lot, but if Wade had kids, they've never surfaced."

"But?"

"Damn it, I never could hide from you." Dick wasn't at all happy about the fact, either.

"Just tell me…don't make me pull teeth to get it." Slade continued to eat, keeping his thoughts hidden.

"Fine. You know, one of these days you're going to realize that I'm just trying not to hurt you," Dick growled at him. "Grant. Your older son. He died around the time I first met you--made a lot of bad choices, and one of them killed him. And Rose. Their half-sister. Remember the pretty girl you saw leaving the other week?"

Slade considered that. "She's mine?"

"Yeah. That's your youngest."

"I guess it's a good thing I didn't ask her for her number, as they say." Slade forced himself to be light, not liking the concept of having had three kids he knew nothing of.

Dick couldn't help laughing, though it was a little hysterical. "Kind of helps that you were about twelve at the time..."

Slade gave him a smile, one that was easy, unforced…and one that brought home the resemblance to Joey in so many ways. "Well, there was that." He thought he'd been discreet so far, moving between the older girls of the apartments, charming one and then another into 'experiences' he did not think Dick would approve of.

Dick really wasn't sure if he wanted to turn away from that smile, or bask in it... and wound up doing the second. "There was that," he agreed, and finally managed to make himself go get breakfast. 

Slade had taken note of the way his smile worked on Dick, and wondered. Did it mean he smiled rarely, once this man knew him at the right age? Or had there been more than friendship with Joey, like the two older men who lived upstairs?

Dick, on the other hand, had made note of the fact that Slade hadn't asked a single question about the children's mothers. 

The phone ringing distracted him from watching Slade finish his breakfast, which he had caught himself doing.

//What, again?// "Grayson."

"Need you to keep Lian," Roy said quickly, obviously already on his way from background noise. "Dinah got hurt last night; I'm on my way to pick her and her kid up, but can't coop Lian up like that."

"Shit, Roy... okay, sure. How bad's she hurt?" 

"O's not letting her fly for at least a week, maybe two," Roy answered. "Damn, and I thought her going back to her team was sensible." He cursed a moment, which led to Dick hearing Lian's voice chastising him, which was why he wasn't being specific. "I'm going to drive down and back today, so I can get Lian tonight from you, alright? Once I get Di home, and that kid of hers settled down."

"You'll fill me in later, right? Tell her be more careful. Sure, I'll take Dart."

"You're a prince among rogues, Dickie boy," Roy teased him, trying to put his worry out of his mind.

It was not much longer before Roy arrived, letting himself and Lian in…and stopping dead in his tracks as he saw Slade.

"Damn, kid…" He couldn't finish.

"You knew Joey too," Slade surmised.

"Tell me about it," Dick agreed with Roy, words going over Slade's, though not blocking them. "Hey, baby girl," he said, walking over to pick her up.

"Yeah, Joey was a real great guy, 'til shit happened," Roy said, not able to help the hard edge that came to his words. Slade didn't flinch, but he did focus his attention on the young girl.

"'Nother quarter, Daddy," Lian reminded her father for the curse word. "Hi, Unca Dick. Aunt Di went and got hurt, so she's coming to stay with us. Grandpa Ollie lives too far, and she was cussing at the idea of staying in the bat infested state of New Jersey a minute longer." She grinned, having been very happy Dinah had wanted to talk to her, to let her know she was alright.

"This is your daughter, Mister Harper?" He walked over as the girl was snuggling in her Uncle Dick's arms.

Dick's jaw slowly dropped at Lian's chattering recital. //Jesus, Bruce. What the hell is wrong with you?// "I bet she was, Lian," Dick nodded. "Considering I had Tim on my doorstep last night... Make it quick in and out, Bro."

"Yeah, figured." Roy looked at the boy and nodded. "Her name is Lian. Lian, this is … Slade."

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Lian," Slade said with charm.

"Hi," she said softly, before burying her face in Dick's neck.

"He's okay, Lian," Dick told her, carefully rubbing her upper back. "Promise. He's staying with me for a while."

"Daddy said he was a bad man before the Witch Boy got him," Lian said. Dick caught, out of the corner of his eye, the barest reaction her words had on the boy under his care…and Roy saw it too. 

"See you," the redhead called and left. 

Slade rested a hand on the child's back, comfortingly. "That may be, but I think your uncle here is trying to make sure I'm not."

Dick was making some very nasty mental commentary at Roy's back as he left, and nodded. "It's okay, Lian." Then he really noticed Slade's reaction and nearly blinked in shock. //Don't like that, huh? Good. There's another reminder for you.//

Lian turned and looked at the blond teen, at his gentle smile, and slowly nodded. "You be good, and I'll be your friend."

"As long as I'm good, I'll be yours," he told her, making no promises on his future.

Dick slowly relaxed. He'd been worried that Lian would stay upset, which would have made for a very, very long day. "Lian, did daddy feed you?"

"Pop-Tart!"

Slade shook his head. "Dick, let me run to the store, so she gets a better lunch," he said, going to get his jacket. "I'll stay in today, in case you already had stuff to do, when I get back."

//Roy, your ideas of breakfast....// "Sure, Slade. Need cash?"

"If you're offering…" He never seemed to lack for money for his own wishes.

Dick shifted Lian around and tossed him his wallet. "Just don't try and use the plastic, huh?"

"Yes sir." Slade turned smartly on his heel and left to take care of groceries for the day. Along the way he checked with some of the ones he ran errands for, earning cash the only way he could right now.

`~`~`~`~`

When Dick got in from his part time job, he found Lian fast asleep, head nestled on Slade's thigh, the boy's hand stroking her hair. He was watching the news now, but Dick could tell Lian had probably had the remote originally from the calm scene.

"Her father should be coming over in an hour to pick her up."

"I sense a sparring match in my near future," Dick sighed softly. "Looks like you two got along fine, though..." The apartment was still even in decent shape.

"It was…educational." Slade sounded as if he had learned something of importance. "Lian's mother is still at large?"

Dick's eyes narrowed. "Not still, so much as again. She has this annoying habit of getting loose."

"Lian and I had a good day." He slipped free of the girl's head, so he could stand up. "She was good company."

"Good." He smiled at the sleeping little girl fondly. "She's a good kid. You didn't mind watching her too much, then?"

"No." He snorted then. "Said I was the second Wilson to be her babysitter. She told me a lot about Rose." Slade's charm had evidently loosened Lian's tongue to share everything about her life history.

Dick chuckled, "She liked Rose... and I think Rose liked her. And Lian's pretty good at reading people."

"Hmm." Slade shrugged and walked back to his bedroom, leaving Dick with the sleeping princess.

//What did you tell him, little girl?// Dick wondered, walking over to check out the news, reading the scrolling text. //And how much trouble is it going to make me?//

He saw the recent world news included a blurb about the anniversary of the devastation of Qurac, and could easily figure out just how Cheshire had come up.

//It had to be that... okay. I can deal with this. Once Lian's gone.//

Roy showed up before Lian woke, and looked relieved she was asleep. "Hey Short Pants," he said wearily. 

"Hey Bowhead," he replied equally softly. "You look wiped..."

"Sin glared suspiciously at me the whole drive back. Had to ride up front." Roy shook his head. "Di managed to get a mild concussion, break one arm, and a gut shot." He snorted. "And here I thought with Slade here, she might quit harassing bad guys with guns."

"Shot can't have been too bad if they let her go... and she must be mad about the arm. What is that, twice in a little over a year?"

"Same arm. Damn close to the break line, from what she said. I could barely look her in the eye, considering I had seen him this morning." The redhead shrugged it off. "And it wasn't bad, but I don't think the doctor would have kept her for short of critical…she was bitching up one side and down the other at everyone."

"From what I've heard, that's typical for when she gets hurt. You going to be all right with her?" Dick kept the expression off his face at the reminder of just who had broken her arm the last time with a slight shake of his head.

"She'll be fine. Hardest part is dealing with her brat." Roy did not approve of Sin, but then, she had been at the root of Dinah having her stupidest moment to date. "We'll be fine; Lian will keep her straight." The redhead rose with a groan to pick his daughter up.

Dick went to get the doors, making sure Roy got downstairs and into the car safely. "Roy... the kid's making me crazy, and I hadn't been up five minutes when I got my eyes on him..." Unsympathetic as Roy had been at first, he was still the only outlet Dick had.

"Dick…" Roy sighed. "You gotta get someone else involved. He gets to you, he always has. Maybe another person would help you stay grounded better." He then shook his head. "And seeing him…kick in the nuts, man. Joey, with a better hair cut."

Dick barked a harsh laugh, "Yeah. It really was... who, Roy? Who else wouldn't hold what he became against him enough to help me--I mean, yeah, Ted's doing his best, but he's busy with JSA stuff most of the time..."

"Could solve part of my problem…" Roy then shook his head violently. "Hell no, stupid Roy, don't even go there."

Dick cocked his head curiously. "What, Roy?"

"No." Roy glared at him. "Even if she will be driving me crazy in a week," he grumbled. "Ahh hell, why not? He's too young for her right now." The archer looked at his best friend. "Di. She's not going to stay in bed, and she might like the challenge of instructing someone for a change. Surprised she hadn't heard about it from Ted anyway."

Dick's head tipped the other direction, thinking about that. "Hmm...not a bad idea... Give me a call when she gets stir-crazy, and I'll point Slade the gym's way. You're not bringing Sin to my place, not after what I've heard."

Roy laughed. "She's going with Dinah wherever Dinah goes…that was made clear, very quick." He then waved. "See ya man."

"See ya." He headed back upstairs, letting himself back into the apartment.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick leaned on the opposite wall from Slade's door, waiting uneasily, exactly where he'd been since about three o'clock. He might have one more week, he might just have lied by a few months... but he doubted it. He was pretty damn sure the kid was going to wake up with boot camp and whatever his first deployment had been in his head... and from everything he'd ever heard, boot camp at that point in time had been brutal. //Please... don't let me lose him.//

He heard the first sound of movement, a very violent reaction to waking in a bed that did not jibe with where his memories said he was. Dick heard for the first time as Slade actually used the four-letter word that Dick got glares for. It was followed by random other curses, all very low, as the young man in that room tried to push images of being one of the best soldiers out of his head enough to grasp his present.

Dick quite calmly said the hell with propriety and walked through the door, almost glad to hear him sounding a little more like himself. Slade was sitting up on the bed, bare-chested, breathing hard and sweating. He tried to blank his face, but the physical evidence was too much to throw aside.

"Military advisors to the French," he growled. "Unofficial loans to their troops."

Dick moved to him, kneeling on the bed a foot or two away, and nodded. "I know the history..."

Slade shoved himself off the bed, moving with a barely controlled violence. "Woke up out of a monsoon," he said, fighting back the images boiling in his mind. He took several deep breaths, remembering the campaign, the kills, all of it.

Dick didn't follow, seeing the violence for what it was, watching him, trying to figure out the best thing to say. "Good to be awake, then?" he asked, not at all mockingly.

Slade felt his heart finally slow, and turned slowly. "Going to the gym." He grabbed for a clean shirt.

"Want company?" It was open, honest concern and an offer.

"I'd rather punch those yahoos down there than you," Slade told him.

Dick smiled, "That assumes you'd hit me, Slade... and I don't want you putting someone in traction before you catch up the muscle-memory to what you know in your head, but if you insist."

"Muscle memory." He looked down at his hands, and Dick saw something flash through his eyes, a memory he possessed concerning those hands. "Need some space, some time, to get now in front of the past," Slade growled.

"I wish I could help..." 

Something in his tone made the younger man turn and regard him.

"Why, in all the world, do you care about a killer who chooses to be what he is?" he asked, voice harsh and cold all at once.

"Because you taught me. Because you ran with the Titans to help your son and proved you weren't just what you became. Because I know you were still a good man, and that good man got me through some of the worst times in my life--okay, a little weirdly once or twice, but you did. Because being a soldier doesn't make you a murderer, it just made you a patriot. Because you let me buy my partner's life with a buck fifty over the contract you'd signed and I knew you'd do it." The reasons came out in a jumble, and some of them stayed unsaid, but that was most of them.

Slade studied him, then nodded sharply. "Fine." He nodded to the door, pulling the shirt on. "Come on; you can show me a few things."

Dick was up and moving in a heartbeat, nervous tension so, so strong in him... holding almost still to pour out that much of himself had been agonizingly hard, he wasn't going to stop moving for a while. //New shirts. First thing tomorrow morning, that fits like a damn glove now... And I have to spar with that? Shiiiit.//

Slade had gotten used to the need to wear larger pants the night of the change, but even so, the jeans he had on were nearly as tight as the shirt he had poured himself into. He was not as buff as he would be, but the muscles were forming, the cut was showing, and he moved with a new quiet that reminded Dick of the deadly silence Deathstroke had been prone to.

//Daaamn---I did NOT just think that!// Crazy, absolutely crazy thoughts shoved deep down where they wouldn't come back anytime soon, Dick followed Slade, cat-quiet himself, heart still hammering in his chest from the desperation he'd felt about pulling him back from that... that self-hate. If he kept thinking like that... the end result was obvious.

"Walk or drive?" Slade asked, taking a deep breath of the morning air as they walked out of the building. The fact the shirt strained got his attention, and he sighed with a shake of his head. "At least the growing should slow down soon."

"Walk, I think. It'll give you time to cool down a little more." Dick reached over and laid a hand against his shoulder, thankful he wasn't having to look up, yet. "It's not that world, not that time, and you're a long way from it," Dick told him softly, the way he'd talked Kory out of nightmares of captivity, and once or twice, Bruce out of the grip of his past.

Slade eyed the hand with an amused look. "I can see where this world came from, though."

Dick looked back at him with a shrug, not moving the hand. If Slade hadn't figured out by now that he touched people when he was worried--or in general--they had a problem, and he sighed. "Yeah. I guess so... looking back it's almost easy to see, but looking forward, then? I don't know." //What're you thinking? Did I say too much? I knew this was going to be bad, but I don't know how bad it was, yet, and you won't tell me...//

"You know it's going to get worse from here." Slade didn't make a further reference to the hand on his shoulder. "If that's what I started out as…"

"You were black ops for a long time," Dick agreed softly. "And I don't know when in there you met the friends you did have... but, Slade. Why were you over there? What made you enlist?" //Separate the actions from the intent, focus on the intent...//

Slade frowned; images of his father's funeral in the back of his mind. "Nothing left. Uncle Sam promised a man a way to be a real man, cradle to the grave. And besides, I was already a pretty good scrapper."

"Nothing to do with 'Doing nothing isn't for me'?" Dick asked, tilting his head at him.

Slade looked away, toughening his features…but Dick glimpsed why the army had been his first choice. "It's what a man did."

"Still a fine career, too," Dick nodded. "Lots of good women and men still in uniform."

"Is that a hint? Tired of me already?" The light tone was actually teasing as Slade pulled away from analyzing himself, his motives.

"No to both. Just saying I think you went in for good reasons." Dick's hand tightened on his shoulder a moment, then relaxed and dropped away, letting him know he was willing to drop it, too. At least for now.

Slade was quiet for most of the rest of the walk, stopping Dick just before they went in. "No matter how this turns out…thank you for trying." He then stepped past Dick and into the gym without letting him reply to that.

Dick sighed softly and followed. This early, very few were in the gym, so he'd actually be able to cut loose. Ted was nowhere in sight when they began, and Slade only greeted two of those already here. They took over the ring near the back of the gym, with Slade going and changing into gym clothes. Ted had apparently gotten used to the weekly shifts, because these fit the young man well. 

Meeting Slade in the ring was different than any other time they had sparred; he brought a raw talent, freshly learned combat skills, to this match.

And Dick loved it, he was so much more of a challenge... He wound up using more of his Nightwing moves than he'd thought... but that just made him smile wider. The match drug out, distracting several of the patrons from any serious training with the give and take. It came down to a matter of stamina, as Slade poured that raw talent into keeping Dick at bay until he just could not go further.

"Wow, that was damn beautiful, Dick," came a familiar voice. Off to one side, with Ted nearby, was Dinah, her arm in a sling, and looking with interest at the pair in the ring.

Slade turned to see who was addressing his benefactor…and saw the spitting image of the woman the newsreels had called Black Canary in his childhood. She was not wearing the provocative clothes, but Slade Wilson never forgot a face like that, not when it had been part of a team much in the newspapers and at the cinemas.

"Thanks!" Dick panted, shirt soaked, and turned sideways to wave at Dinah. "Hey Di. How's the side?"

"Better; bet Roy made out like I took it full on." She shifted, pulling at her shirt hem just a little to show the neat little bandage along her waist. "Been a mother hen. So when Courtney and Pat kidnapped Sin this morning, I called up Ted, thinking to get a little exercise." She then focused on the blond at his side. "Dinah Lance. We've met, quite a bit into your future." She kept her face a pleasant mask, hiding all associations from the man. 

Slade came to the edge of the ring and crouched. "Must have been a treat for me." He watched her eyes, saw the flicker of interest…with a hint of too much knowledge to follow through.

"He was worried," Dick defended his best friend, watching the two of them. He'd heard the rumors about the two of them... and could see a hint of the reason behind it.

"I could point out we first met by you being less than a gentleman," she told Slade. "But you grew on me." Dinah flashed a grin at Dick, turning away from Slade with her full body. It was enough to make Slade back off, thinking about the way she gave off a strong yes-no vibe to his presence. "It's okay. I needed a small break…okay, bad pun." She had involuntarily glanced at Slade. "A vacation. And Sin needed to meet Lian…badly. I need that girl to settle down, to learn there's more than just picking everything and one apart for weaknesses." 

Dick grinned back at her, amused, then nodded. "Yeah, I'd heard as much from some people... Glad you got the vacation. And hey, now, bad puns are my job!"

"I actually need someone who's up to light sparring….but you two already wore each other out, and Ted here won't match me," she said.

"Hellcat, even with that arm tied off, I know better than to meet you in the ring," Ted laughed. "And you know your boy would murder any of us who let you fight just yet."

"I'm not that tired," Slade volunteered, lazy smile on his lips. "I'd like to see a woman fight, who has one arm in the sling, but doesn't seem to know that's a bench injury."

Dick shook his head, and flipped out of the ring. "At least you got a sneak peak at his tactics, Dinah, and I wore him out for you pretty decently... Slade, you bust open her stitches, and I won't get between you and Roy."

"I'll take it easy on her," Slade promised. Dinah snorted, let Ted tie her arm off tighter to her body, and got into the ring.

"Wilson, you will eat those words," she promised him, her body language and voice going fully into the friendly range. It helped, slightly, to keep Slade's hackles down at being addressed by his last name, soldier like.

Dick settled over near Ted to watch, shaking his head. "Something tells me this's a bad idea," he murmured softly.

"Anything with her in the ring, usually is." Ted had no illusions on his goddaughter.

Slade faced Dinah, and had to move suddenly as a kick nearly clipped his head. She was guarding her side and arm, fighting from the strong side, but he found it as difficult to get past her guard as it was to get past Dick's. When he did tag her, she usually had a nasty punch or kick to retaliate with. He was actually winded from the dual sparring sessions when Dinah suddenly moved out of his reach and range, grinning.

"You're something else, Slade," she said, sucking in a deep breath to ease her own oxygen starvation.

"I'll take that as a compliment, sister." He was moving to get out of the ring, failed to see just how violently she reacted to the familiarity, with her eyes darkening like storm clouds. Dick, however, did see it, and saw her pull the mask back over her features just as quickly.

Dick shook his head, now knowing for sure that there had been something there, or at least something wanted. //Maybe this time she can... Maybe she'll be what stops him...// He completely refused to admit that the thought hurt. Dinah was just his type, as strong and smart and fearless as Addie Kane had been.

"Been fun, Slade; Dick!" Dinah smiled and got out of the ring. "But I think I'll grab my shower at the house. Ted! You will come eat dinner with us this week, or I'll kick your ninth life to hell."

"Sure thing, Hellcat!" Ted grinned at her as she beat a hasty retreat out of the gym, knowing damn well that was what she was doing.

"See you, Dinah," Dick called at her retreating back.

"Hope to see you around again, Miss Lance." Slade watched the woman go, admiring the view. She waved back at them, turning long enough to offer a smile before vanishing out on the street.

Dick bounced up to join Slade, having more than gotten his wind back watching the lighter match. "I'm starving, and don't want to shop, cook, or have you cook. How's the closest pancake house sound?"

Slade nodded, still trying to catch his breath fully, drawing in deep breaths and letting them go. "Could go for that." He nodded over at Ted. "Thank you again, Mister Grant."

"Anytime, kid."

Dick grinned, happy and full of himself and enjoying life, and waited for Slade so they could head out the door. Once safely out of Ted's hearing. "So. What'd you think of Dinah?"

Slade looked around to be sure the woman was not in sight or hearing, that she truly had left. "She's a very fine woman. I can see she's nearly your skill level in fighting, when she's not injured. And she reminds me of a costumed hero…would I be correct in thinking she bears a relation to Black Canary?"

Dick grinned. "Yeah. She's the one you remember's daughter... and yeah. I never get enough chances to practice with her... we don't quite run the same circles, but she's amazingly good." 

"She knew me," Slade said, more soberly. "Not just…as an opponent. Unless I read her wrong."

"You two've known each other quite a while, yeah... and no-one ever confirmed or denied anything to me, so I'm not sure. But given her track record, and yours, I wouldn't be that surprised."

"Interesting." //First Dick, now this woman…yet those crimes…// Slade pointed to the small diner he often ate at in the mornings. "Here?"

Dick chuckled. "That'd be the word for it. Yeah. Works fine, the coffee's good."

"So's the short orders," Slade said, going with familiarity to a particular table and settling in. He wasn't particularly talkative after that, but he did not fully shut Dick out, either. Dick settled in... and if there was one thing he was good at, it was finding plenty to talk about with even a vaguely communicative partner, trying not to feel quite so ridiculously pleased that Slade wasn't shutting him out completely.

`~`~`~`~` 

Dick knew the minute he walked in that something was wrong; Slade was not one for sitting in the dark. He walked over, settling on the arm of the couch. "What is it?" he asked quietly.

That was when he smelled it, smelled the reek of adrenaline and blood allowed to settle on skin.

"Put a man in the hospital tonight. Least I assume that's where the cops took him. I got the hell out of the alley. Figure my prints still say I'm a wanted man."

Dick took a long, slow breath. "Yeah, they probably do... but at least they'll be looking for Deathstroke and not you. Okay... why?"

"Good men don't do nothing," Slade answered him. "Guy was…abusing another kid." 

Dick tensed, hissing. "I can just guess how. ...Did you need to stop him that hard? How's the kid, any idea?" No condemnation there. He'd done much the same to a few child molesters in his time.

"Lost my temper." Slade winced at the memory. "Kid's…shaken. Pretty bad. Stopped him before…well, just barely. But still."

"Good," Dick said fiercely. "Not good that you lost your temper, though. But you're right, we don't do nothing, and it's hard to keep control when you see something like that."

Slade turned toward him, considered telling him about the French soldier he had remembered beating that badly, for abusing a native. He held it back though; he didn't want to get the man's hopes up. "I should shower." He hadn't been able to yet, memories mingling with the present, making him wonder if fate could be escaped and coming back time and again to the thought that his memories would be too strong to overcome. Slade Wilson was a killer, and would become Deathstroke.

"Probably so," Dick agreed. "I'll handle burning the clothes, but you get to get the blood off my couch." He reached out, caught his hand despite the blood and possible damage. "You did the right thing, tonight, if a little excessively. Evil would have been walking away and letting that kid get hurt."

"Yeah." Slade accepted the hand, holding onto it firmly. "And the blood's all on my hands…I think. Some of my clothes, maybe." He inspected his other hand next, noting the small cuts on his knuckles.

"Huh. Smells like more. Good, though." Dick held on to him, not willing to let go, or leave him to fight this demon down alone, and his other hand slid to Slade's shoulder, fingertips against his collarbone. //I'm here. You're not alone in this, and damn it, you did the right thing.// "At least you left him alive."

Slade moved, and the way he did made it easier for Dick to keep that grip on the shoulder. "I did. Just hurt him, the way that kid couldn't."

"Yep. And there's one less hurt kid right now. Not a bad night's work, glad you were around. I was probably over in the Bronx getting shot at, at that point."

"I should have been there, watching your back. But then that kid would have been raped, maybe worse," Slade said, calmly putting his actions in a box that fit his way of thinking. "Shower." He pushed himself up, away from the comforting touch, away from the man who expected him to escape a path he had already walked.

"Never enough of us," Dick agreed, "and I had it. Remind me, again, to set us up a comm. channel, and give you one." If Slade hadn't been Slade, and still in the mindset of the fifties, Dick might have, despite how many times he'd told himself no, refused to consider it, offered to join him. And if his hands slid a little as he let go, well, Slade had moved quickly.

The other man stopped briefly in the hallway. "Eighteen tomorrow." He did not sound as if he was looking forward to it. "You going to be there when I wake again?"

"Yeah. I will."

"Means something to me," Slade admitted, before continuing down the hall.

Dick absolutely couldn't stop that smile, and went to wash the blood away from his hands, and catch a couple hours' nap. The awakenings were almost like clockwork, and he ought to have about three. He'd be there in time. 

`~`~`~`~`

He was up and leaning against the wall, listening intently to be sure he'd made it up in time. There were no sounds from inside the room, beyond the ones of a man sleeping through twisting dreams.

//Whew.// With what Slade had said, he thought he might be able to enter the room… but then, he'd rather not have Slade mistake him for an enemy in the dark. Best to wait until he heard him wake.

"NO!" The strong, bull roar shout of a man pushed too far shattered the quiet of the room, of the entire apartment.

Dick was inside in another moment, calling his name softly, repeatedly, crouching beside the bed, looking up at him. "Slade, come away, come back, it's 2006 and you're a long way from Vietnam, come away, come back..."

A deep, gasping breath and a convulsive reach for a gun that was not there was the first sign Slade was awake; the second was in the utter stillness the man fell too after seeing the darkened room around him. One strong hand moved, finding Dick's arm, then his shoulder, reassuring himself that it was his friend there in the room with him.

"Now, not then," he said, low and harsh.

Dick slid up, higher, bracing up on the bed. "Now, not then. Whatever it was is done and past, you're not there. You're here. I'm here."

Slade nodded, sitting up and turning, so that his legs were right beside Dick, his hand still on Dick's shoulder. "Needed you here, too."

Dick shifted, looking up at him in the faint morning light, settling more comfortably, ignoring the positioning with everything he had as he struggled with his reaction to the words. "Glad I was. Want to talk about it?" Girlish thing to say, maybe, but. "Sounded pretty bad..."

Slade shook his head. "You don't need those images." There was honest to god concern for Dick in that sentence, as Slade did something he had not in years…he tried to protect Dick.

Dick reached up to lay a hand against the one on his shoulder. "You don't need to carry them alone, either. I'm here."

"Entire villages…they'd tell us to get rid of them. Show the enemy they couldn't go home again, that no one was safe," Slade finally said, not having a single clue just how hard his words would hit Dick.

Dick shuddered in place, //oh, god...// A dozen things crashed through his mind, images of those burned-out villages from old film splicing in with the green glowing crater that had been his home and he nearly gagged, hand locking tighter around Slade's as he dropped his head, hiding the reaction as he leaned against him, //not rejecting him, can't, won't, not his fault...//

Slade saw…felt…the reaction running through Dick, and squeezed the other's shoulder lightly. "I should not have said anything…" He was troubled by the strong reaction; it looked like far more than a civilian trying to cope with images foreign to them; it looked as if Dick had seen it, but Dick was no soldier.

"It's… it's okay. It… wasn't your call. Not your idea. Hell, right now you're younger than I am..." He looked up again, seeing the concern there. "Sorry. Shouldn't be flipping on you, when you're the one that just lived through having to be part of that." No doubt in Dick's voice that Slade had been only a reluctant participant in that kind of behavior. 

Slade shook his head. "The ones that don't fight…kids especially…don't belong on the battlefield. We drug them onto it!"

"I know I've heard the old news reports, and some things from other vets... That war was hell, so many kinds of it... but what could you have done? You were a soldier. Means following orders." //'Just following orders', the old Nazi defense; but damn it, he was just a kid following orders... Orders he hated, too. God, I've never seen him this angry.//

Slade took a deep breath, calming himself by force of will alone…and Dick glimpsed the beginning of the iron control this man would use later in life to keep his temper in check. All the Titans had glimpsed that temper, and watched it be fused into a cold, hard drive to finish his goals.

"It happened too long ago for me to do anything about it now," he said in a quiet voice, and Dick felt chills. He could see Deathstroke having gone through and eliminated certain military high rankers in the aftermath of the war.

"Yeah. It did. Long time past, even though you just remembered it." He picked himself up, finally, settling on the bed beside him, hand going to his shoulder, just sitting there in the silence, just letting him know he was there, that he didn't have to face those memories alone.

"Up for another workout today?" Slade finally asked. "Think I might have a few new tricks to use."

"Am I breathing?" //And basically uninjured?// "I'm up for that. Ought to be interesting, if you're going to be pulling new moves. Maybe we ought to stick to my mats, though. I think we spooked a couple kids at the gym last week."

"Oh I don't know…that pretty blonde might be back in," Slade said casually. His eyes said more than his tone did, and Dick knew Dinah had, despite herself, been hanging out at the gym much of the time she was in New York, ostensibly teaching Lian a few things and letting Sin exercise her skills.

Dick's teeth set tight against each other a moment before he could make himself laugh, shake his head. "Showoff. All right, I'll manage." He'd taken a hell of a risk last week, hadn't realized how many people would be in there before they finally stopped... He needed to be more careful. Last thing he needed was to blow his ID after all these years. "She just might be, at that."

`~`~`~`~`

By the time they made it out of the gym, Dick had seen, first hand, just how charismatic Slade already was. He had flirted heavily, through casual banter and innuendo both, with Dinah, who had responded despite herself.

Not that he was any stranger to the man's charisma, he'd seen it working often enough, but watching him with Dinah had this odd combination of hope and gut-churning nausea working in his gut. He'd take anything that kept Slade from walking that same damn path again, he would... but just like Roy'd predicted he'd gotten stupid about the man again--not that he hadn't known that the other night--and was doing his level best to keep it under control. He wanted Slade to come out of this okay, and if that meant Dinah... it meant Dinah. //They'd be damn gorgeous together,// he had to admit, if only to himself, and only reluctantly. He'd turned up the charm with her a little himself, mainly because they both knew it wasn't serious, and he wasn't about to take his own... upset out on her.

Lian had been in there, riding Ted's shoulders as he yelled at the few kids training that morning, chiming in with pointers that were pretty accurate from her bird's eye view. The quiet Sin had been called down twice by the younger girl for being rude in the way she was observing people. Dinah had finally collected the girls and left, but not before Slade almost persuaded her to dinner. The vigilante had wound up declining strictly on family commitments, leaving Slade looking too pleased with himself. 

At breakfast, Slade was pretty stable, having locked away the memories. "You keep your lives separate to protect those close to you…yes?" he asked low, finally letting his curiosity on the masked life come to the surface.

"Yeah... if people crack my secret, it's not that far to the rest of my family... and that's big, big trouble. You tumble to one, it's not that far until you figure out more, and then..." He looked more than vaguely haunted. "Then no-one around me, cape or otherwise, is safe."

"Raises the question, then." Slade met Dick's eyes. "How did I know who you are, under it, if I was one of the bad guys? I know you said I worked with you time to time, but…seems you'd be guarded even in your own community."

"You worked us... worked us good. You got a mole inside our team and learned it all." Dick shrugged. He'd gotten over it, eventually. "We weren't always quite so paranoid... which has kicked us all in the ass a time or two."

"Hmm." The question in Slade's eyes was 'why', but he did not pursue it. "I'm going to need a new identity. Civilian and otherwise. I'm a wanted man, after all. At least until I get to that point in my life…and then, I hope you see it coming soon enough to do what you need to."

//It's not going to come to that!// "Yeah. You are." He'd been thinking about that little problem for a while, and he thought he had the solution... same solution they all used to keep Dick Grayson, Bruce Wayne, and Tim Drake's real fingerprints and DNA profiles away from systems. Made more complicated by the sheer number of databases he was going to have to crack, but... he couldn't let this kid get picked up as Deathstroke. " ...Batman is going to kill me for what I'm going to do," he sighed softly. "But the risk's getting too great. Shame your first name's so damn uncommon, I'm kind of used to calling you by it..."

"You mentioned no one knew if Wade had kids…" Slade pointed out. "There's also the potential to let me be my own bastard," he said. "It would clear up certain similarities."

Dick chuckled softly. "Oh, Rose would just love that... but it would work. It would actually work fairly nicely... I can deal with that. Gonna take a couple of days, and me spending a lot of time on the base's computers. Going to join me on the roofs tonight?" He wondered just what Roy would think of him using the lair they shared, with computers the equal of what they had had in the Outsiders' HQ, to set Slade up with a new life.

"Got your back," he said, a touch of a smile at his lips. Slade enjoyed the fight, not so much for the fight or the challenge, but as a pride in himself for being as good as he was.

"Alright." Dick smiled back over at him. "Let me get this mess cleaned up, and I'll head over and get to work." 

`~`~`~`~`

Slade paused to catch his breath, smiling over at Dick from their sprint across rooftops, burning off the energy of a fight that had gone without a hitch. 

"You and me…it's like, perfect synchronicity."

Nightwing smiled back at him, eyes bright behind the lenses and his entire body reflecting it, "Yeah. We get like that..." It really had gone perfectly. "Nice work."

The young man smiled brightly. "Nightwing…so, what kind of name would suit me? Costume, all that?"

"Hmm..." Dick tilted his head, considering. "Good question... Gonna be interesting, trying to figure that out." //I don't know what else fits you... but Deathstroke doesn't either, and it won't...//

"How close to full growth am I?" Slade knew he'd need to wait for that to really get invested in a costume. He was easily his full height now, but not quite filled out…though not far from it either.

Dick studied him intently. "Close... you're over getting taller, but you're not as filled out as you were when I knew you."

That got a chuckle. "Hard to imagine."

Dick shrugged, "Truth." Standing there, watching him like this, young and as open as Slade ever got, smiling in the city-light and talking about this with him... //Yeah, my objectivity is so totally gone.//

"Hey…" Slade looked over at the man who had helped him out so much. "Think Dinah would like me better once I am running officially in your community?"

"...Like I know what goes on in that woman's head?" //Ouch. See Grayson? Stop being stupid.//

"That woman?" Slade sounded amused. "How much grief will your…friend, Harper, give me if I do convince her to go out?" His hesitation on the word, the slide he gave it, showed that in the few times Roy had been around Dick, Slade had picked up on the casual intimacy.

"Okay. Any woman." Dick chuckled softly. "Well, he won't shoot you in the back. I'd never forgive him. But he's liable to be... difficult. She's... really important to him, and I'm not sure he's over the grudge yet."

"Grudge?" Slade frowned, then shook his head. "That will be a fact of life. Dealing with those that I did things against in the past."

"But you haven't. Not this you, and I'm getting tired of--never mind. No matter."

"What, Nightwing?" Slade's face showed honest curiosity. "I can face the past I made, the other time around." He then closed down, eyes and face both growing guarded, considering that despite all Dick had done, each time he got a new year, he felt the pull down that path.

"I'm getting tired of people telling me you haven't got a chance."

Slade sat down on the edge of the roof, unable to hold Dick out when the man was so honest. "I'm not sure I do. Even with you there, when I wake up to remind me it's a past that belongs to him, I know…I feel the pieces of the puzzle sliding closer to a picture you will not like."

Dick's expression tightened as he walked over to settle not far from him. "You don't have to make those choices again, or live anything close to that life." //Even if you age all the way, you ought to be okay again, not crazy...// He'd decided early that telling Slade what Jason had said would be a sure and certain route to disaster, and so kept that hard behind his teeth.

"Those choices become a part of me all over again, every week." Slade shook his head. "No need to worry about it right away. Should have a few more weeks of just being a soldier, from the military records I could dig up."

"Yeah. I think so, from what I was told. We've got a while." //Please, please settle on someone, I don't care who--okay yes I do, but--before Addie puts your eye out...//

"Come on; one more run, then home?" Slade jumped up, balancing so close to the edge of the roof. "Too much talk."

"Yeah. Right with ya. Got to be some more trouble around here somewhere..." and Nightwing threw himself into flight. Slade was but a half breath behind him, using the lines with the economy of motion that Bruce was apt to show.

`~`~`~`~`

The morning Slade turned nineteen, Dick heard the man actually laugh as he was waking. There no sounds of horror this time, no sounds of coping with the hell Southeast Asia had been. 

Dick tilted his head, curious, and stuck his head in the door. "Slade?"

Dick could see the man already sitting up, very well built, face starting to take on the character of weathering and personality Dick remembered…except that smile was one of the rare sights. It was the smile of Slade remembering something fondly.

"I'm fine, this morning, Dick. I remembered…something good." His voice had the peculiar note of satisfaction Slade had often reserved for praising Robin, or Joey.

Dick slid on in, expression still very curious, wondering what or who that might be. //Can't be Addie, I don't think...//

Slade moved to one side, making room for Dick to join him. "I met someone over there," he volunteered. "Someone who made the hell that much more bearable. A staunch friend. I wonder how long he stayed in my life?"

"Wintergreen."

As soon as Dick said it, Slade nodded. "Yes. British, very Brit at times. But a good man to run with." The fondness lingered in the way he spoke of the man. "Can you tell me if he's still around? Or do you not know? You know the name, so…"

"He stayed with you for years... but no, I don't know what happened to him as of last year. I know the safehouse he was in most often was destroyed, and no one has seen anything of him since. Rose hasn't heard from him... I'm sorry. I wish I did."

Slade shrugged, and then shook his head. "Too much to hope…" He drew in a deep breath. "Glad to know he stayed. I owed him a strong debt."

"The story I heard said you paid him back," Dick told him, letting himself pace the room rather than move towards the bed. "Even if it took you a while." 

"Good. He was a very good man to have at your back." With an effort, he shook himself out of memories of shared adventures and campaigns to rise, not even bothering with a shirt. "Your mats this morning?"

"Suits me. Nice not to have to hold back for the audience."

Slade strode past, his back newly marred by scars that could have only come from a beating carried far enough to break skin. He went straight for the mats, striding with a new layer of … Dick could not quite place just what the new quality was, but it was very much a part of why both men and women found it hard to ignore Slade on a primal level.

Dick tensed. Not that he hadn't seen those scars before, but on the much older man he remembered, it hadn't been so obvious that they were all linked. "What happened?" asked as he followed. 

Slade glanced back, saw where Dick's eyes were, and darkened slightly. "I disagreed one too many times with orders. I was in the process of being taught better, when Wintergreen interfered with the lesson." He said it in a casual tone, but the tension of his muscles said the event had left a very deep mark on his psyche.

Dick hissed softly, and went to reach out, working a hand over the tension in his back. "Good for Wintergreen. And I think I probably approve of you fighting whatever orders those were." Hand on Slade's skin, warm against his palm and corded with tension. //Me and my big mouth. He was okay, for once...// "Sorry I brought it up."

"You should know. It's things like that which helped shape me into the man you knew," Slade told him simply. The muscles beneath Dick's hand slowly relaxed, as the man let his negative memories go, preferring, for now, to dwell on the more pleasant ones.

Dick stroked his shoulder again, feeling the tension ease away, //Okay. That's better.// He finally let his hand slide away to follow him onto the mats and watch him, waiting for that first tell... Not that Slade ever gave much warning.

Today was little different as Slade stepped onto the mats, and moved into a start position far more familiar to Dick than the more basic ones used in their other sparring sessions. He poured his love for combat into this session with Dick, showing the other man the new things he had regained.

Dick grinned like a fiend and dodged, twisted, and blocked with everything he had, laughing for the fun of it as he slammed counters into place against things he recognized so clearly... It was kind of nice not to have to stress so much about the man's insane speed--not that he wasn't still damn fast!

Slade, seeing the counters to the moves, smiled at them and accepted that he was approaching his style, the one he had kept into his older years. He also started throwing patterns out just to get the counters, studying them, looking for the returns on each one.

That got another laugh, a shake of the head and Dick's willing cooperation. He'd fought the man long enough to know those patterns, that that kick led to this hit--and opening, right there, shoddy defense and his leg snapped out and up, knocking Slade back, though not hard enough to do damage. Friendly match. "Watch that guard, huh?"

Slade stopped then and there, pulling back. "Show me that again." His voice was rough, the sound of Deathstroke demanding, yet laced with tones of needing to know more.

"Sure," Dick nodded, dropping back to wait. "Try that at about half speed."

Slade repeated his motions, following Dick's closely when he showed. His mind now on learning, he continued pushing Dick to share, not able to follow some maneuvers that required greater flexibility, but doing quite well.

//Surreal. Absolutely surreal, teaching him... Cool, though.// Teaching, practicing more than outright fighting combined with that damn magnetism Slade'd suddenly decided to turn on had Dick's emotions and instincts in knots--felt way too much like being with Roy, with all the complications that meant... much as he was trying to ignore it and concentrate on what he was doing.

The more they trained, the more the smile faded, replaced by the full concentration he needed to make the skills his own. They had gone through several sessions like this over the weeks, but this… It was very much as if Slade was dedicating himself to learning Dick's art for a purpose.

Realization of what Slade was doing, how dangerous that could be, flashed through his mind and got locked down, rejected. He wasn't admitting to that possibility, damn it. Sweat ran down his back, across his face; they'd been at this for a while and it didn't feel like they were stopping anytime soon.

When they finally stopped, both drenched in sweat, Slade was on the verge of exhaustion. He collapsed heavily on the mats, taking a long breath.

"Those aerials…not my style by a long shot," he admitted.

Dick dropped beside him, just about as worn out, and breathing just as heavy. "Nope. You're good at defending them, but they're not part of your style, not normally. 'Course, you weren't born in a circus, either. I was aerial before I could walk."

"I can believe it," Slade said. "The way you move is almost as if you are always in flight, just touching down for leverage now and then."

"That's the idea," Dick agreed, still just getting his breath back. "Makes me difficult... more on the streets, where I've got things to work with."

The other man nodded. "I think I'm going to talk a little more seriously with Dinah next time I go to the gym." He turned onto his side, watching Dick with lazy interest. "I've watched her teaching the girls, and I think I can pick up a few tricks from her."

He nodded…then turned a little pale. "Oh, god. You with some of Shiva's tricks..." He whistled, eyes going pleased after the moment of shock. "Damn, that'll be an unholy combination." 

"Shiva?" Slade was curious at Dick's reaction.

"Lady Shiva. The world's premier assassin, according to some. Deadly, deadly bitch, but honorable. Lil' bro trained with her for a while, but Dinah was her primary student... not sure where that's at, after Dinah left. She studied, combined dozens of styles into her own, and reads body language like nobody but her kid. It's creepy, what she can pick up. The combination ought to be interesting."

Slade considered that a long moment. "It's crossed your mind, what letting me have access to this training could do, to that man I became," he said in a very sober voice.

Dick shrugged a shoulder, twisting to look at him full on. "Yeah. 'Course it has. But I've got faith, too. And right now, for at least the next few weeks, you're my partner--and we can use every advantage we can get."

"Then, partner, I will stop seeing just how flustered I can make the pretty bird, and get her enlisted in training me. She sticks to the ground a bit more for my tastes," Slade told him with a small smirk.

Dick winced. "Whatever you do, don't call her that to her face. She'll lay you out."

That got a raised eyebrow. "I know she can…even with that busted wing. Give me time, and I'll laugh that kind of threat off, though."

Dick snorted. "Wouldn't be so sure of that--and trust me on it. That name's off limits to anyone that's not Green Arrow, and it's a major sore spot. Even Roy doesn't use it." 

The blue eyes looking at him were amused. "That explains it all." He had been in the gym when the one called Green Arrow had apparently angered the petite blonde, and Ted had been the one to spar her down from her temper. 

"I miss something?"

"The one time I've seen her temper she was calling this Green Arrow guy all sorts of unfavorable things," Slade told him. "She went ten full rounds with Ted."

"Great. Wonder what he did now. Eh. Not my trouble." he shrugged. "Feel up to moving, yet? I'm starting to think about breakfast pretty hard." 

"More like lunch," Slade told him, his time sense kicking in. "And yes. But I need a hot shower to make sure I keep moving," he added, getting to his feet.

"Yeah. We probably both do." He flipped to his feet despite the tiredness from the workout, grinning as he did it, and headed to go make breakfast while Slade grabbed a shower. 

When Slade emerged, he was still just in pants, damp towel around his neck as he used the end of it to dry his hair. He inhaled the scent of food deeply, nodding.

"Didn't burn it for a change," he said dryly.

"Oh, shut up," Dick said mildly, grinning over at him. "I can actually learn." He handed a plate over, took his, and was doing his level best not to just watch Slade as he ate, listening to the low voices of the talking heads on the TV. The younger man ate like a soldier; speed and practicality showing in every bite. Some things, deep in the nerves, the muscles, apparently reacted more to the memories. His conversations, though, all seemed to be weighted with what Dick was teaching him, helping him experience.

Dick kept talking at him, light and easy, comments mainly on what the sports section was going on about at the moment, until he dumped his plate in the sink and headed for his own shower. What he felt, mostly because he had lived under the man's eye on his life for years was the gimlet stare appraising him as he walked out.

He turned, slow and easy, and arched an eyebrow, cocking his head. "Yeah?"

The trademark smirk, the one that looked so odd without a patch and white hair, came in full measure. "Just watching the way you move," Slade said.

"Hasn't changed a bit," Dick said with a shrug and went after his shower, wondering what in hell was going through the man's head right now. //The older you get the more confusing you get, but then, I knew that already...//

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah didn't hesitate to accept Slade as a student. Ted had shown the hesitation in his eyes at hearing Dinah say 'yes', but promptly agreed to take both girls off her hands when she was in and scheduling a time to work with him, daily. 

Their second such session was drawing to a close, early in the morning before the gym was officially open, when Slade finally decided he had to know.

"You look at me, and I see two things at war in you. Hope, and regret. Tell me why." Slade threw a punch, then twisted and caught the counter, pleasing his teacher on one level. On the other, his question bothered her, but she had never been one for lying.

"I look at you, as you are now, and I see the full picture of the man I could only glimpse in my enemy," she said bluntly. "The hope is that Dick saves that aspect, that somehow you do choose our ways. It's why I agreed to teach you."

"And the regret?"

"Is for the potential threat you will be if you don't choose our way, and I have to help take you down." Two sets of blue eyes met, reading the depth of commitment. "I will, Slade. No matter what misadventures you and I shared, I won't stand by and let you go free."

"Help Dick see that?" Slade asked her, as serious as she was.

"You have my word on it." They then bowed to one another, ending the session.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick walked out of his day job, cracking his neck to resettle it. Slade'd been nineteen for a couple of days, and despite his level best attempts, the air in the apartment nearly nearly throbbed with tension when they got too close--and he'd had a close call or two in their sparring sessions, nearly revealed entirely too much. It wasn't that far to his apartment, he tended to just walk over and back.

"Hey, gorgeous," came his way, before a perky blonde in a Green Lantern half shirt came over, grinning. "Need to bend your ear, Dick."

"Hey beautiful," just as easy, Dick cocking an eyebrow at that shirt, "Hal seen you in that?" Then he got serious. "What's up?"

Dinah glanced down, then smiled brightly. "Not yet, but that would be pretty damn near perfect…oh, sorry." She fell in step with him, looping her good arm around his elbow. "Slade."

"Yeah?" He kept the don't-you-start out of his tone, made it sound more like what'd-he-do-now?, looking sideways at her.

"Whatever you're doing…don't stop!" She was very earnest. "That boy…young man now, I guess, is…all that I thought he might have been."

"Trust me Di, I'm not going to. Not a chance am I going to... and yeah, Di. I know. I live with him, remember?" He relaxed, now that it didn't seem like she was going to jump down his throat over something. 

She squeezed his arm in a friendly hug of sorts. "I told him that I'd regret having to take him down if he chose the other way, because of something he asked me." She shook her head, smiling at the memory before looking up at Dick. "He told me to make sure you understood the need to do it, if it came to that." He could see the honest hope shining in her eyes now. "I just can't see anything beating down his loyalty once he has given it to you, no matter what else his life has to throw him." 

Dick swallowed, shaking his head. "I don't know, Di... I'm fighting time, here, time and pain, but you have no idea how much I hope you're right..." He looked away a moment, then looked back. "And I know we're going to have to take him down if he goes back to that. Not the first time I've been involved with that, either. I'll cope."

The blonde paused their walk, turning to face him full on, looking at his eyes. "You keep following your heart in this, Dick Grayson." She moved swiftly, popping up to kiss his cheek. "I've got faith in you, and in him." She moved back out of his personal space then.

"Thanks, Dinah. Nice t'hear somebody does." That came out more bitter than he'd intended, and he shook his head sharply. "Never mind, Dinah. Thanks. I mean it." He wanted to tell her. God, but he wanted to tell her so badly that they might have a real shot at this... but telling her would be like telling Slade, would mess up her reactions to him and…he couldn't. He knew, Rose knew, and that had to be enough. 

"If you need anything…I'm staying in town even once I get this cast off." She started walking backwards, away from him. "I've got…an interest in seeing him turn out better. Might help me wipe out the feeling that I owe him."

"Alright, Di. I know how to reach ya. Thanks. Roy back yet from that trip?" Roy, in the League. That still rattled his cage. Rattled him more that he was out there with just Hal, this time.

"No. Have to go get the girls from Ted again." She sighed softly. "At least Sin is bonding with him." 

//Okay. Got another few hours to finish screwing with half a dozen country's databases. Good.// "Getting her attached to people's a good thing, though, right?"

"Yeah, but I'm not getting into my mentoring troubles. You be safe, Dick, and I'll talk to you later." She turned and headed in the direction of the gym.

"You too, Di," Dick called after her, and headed home. //That was interesting...//

`~`~`~`~`

Dick was already up to some fairly tricky footwork to stay ahead of Slade's growing skill. Then Slade just…shifted, as he had seen Tim, Cass, even Dinah do, and it was too late to compensate. Two quick moves, and Dick found himself face down on the mats, with Slade above, pinning, a wrist hold keeping the leverage in Slade's favor. He could hear the harsh rasp of the other man's breathing as he tried to control it, could feel the press of thigh and groin at his hip and buttocks from the pin.

He twisted, testing for a way out, not just giving up, trying to toss him aside--and trying even harder not to react to the hold the way he would have reacted to Roy, even to Kory--lost cause, it was Slade and he was so far gone it wasn't funny, but he was trying...

"Don't move," Slade said, voice a long, low sound that caressed Dick's ears. He admired the line of Dick's neck, the muscles and scars on his back, the way the spine bisected that road map of a hard life. 

Dick stilled completely, instantly, body almost locking up as he tried to just keep breathing normally, held and pinned and so far off-balance because of it. He felt Slade shift his hold, keeping the wrist hold now with just one hand, and ghosting his other fingertips over some of the more vivid scars. 

"Hell of a life written in your skin," he said with a note Dick had heard before, long ago when fighting Slade had seemed almost like some ritual courting.

"Been doing this since I was ten years old," Dick replied, using every bit of control to keep his voice easy, steady, while his skin shuddered under Slade's too-gentle touch, eyes wide open to keep to the here-and-now.

The fingers trailed up, over the neck, into the hairline briefly, then back down and along the spine. 

"Any of these from me?" 

"You wouldn't stab me in the back. Shoot me, maybe. But no. Those aren't your work." It was taking everything he had not to shake like a leaf at those touches, at the tease he wasn't quite certain was intentional.

"Show me the ones I did," Slade coaxed, releasing the wrist, but only slightly raising off of Dick.

Dick lay still a long moment, forcing his expression under control, trying to blank his eyes. Then twisted, rolled up enough to look just past him, hips mainly against the mats--and Slade's weight over him was not helping him stay in control at all. "This one," hand just below his throat, before it tracked down to one over his ribs. "This one, and these..." Other, lower side of his body, as he considered if he'd missed any.

Slade's hand followed Dick's lightly inspecting each scar by fingertips, his body settling to both knees, straddling one thigh as he shifted. After touching the last ones, he looked up into Dick's eyes, his own face nearly unreadable.

"It takes passion to keep meeting an opponent like that," he told Dick.

"Mmm... We rarely had much of a choice," Dick said, having given up on doing anything but watching Slade, barely able to keep the hunger and confusion off his face, out of his eyes. "Kept getting in each other's way..."

"I think I can see why," Slade said just before laying his hand along Dick's cheek, fingers sliding over his ear. His eyes sparked, as the expression shifted completely to one of desire. Even in this, he was focused, making Dick see the desire was for him alone. "Between your fire and your skill, not to mention the way you fill out that outfit of yours…" 

Dick's heart nearly stopped, and the breath did stop in his throat as Slade stroked his cheek, looked at him like that, expression he'd seen before but they'd never followed up on... He leaned against his hand, into it, making himself breathe again. "Y' see something you like, then?" brash, pushy, testing if Slade was just screwing with his head or serious about this.

"I have a policy about things I want." Words preceded a shift down, hand moving into the hair, gripping as Slade brought their mouths together. His weight shifted as well, as he slid against Dick's groin, bringing his other arm down to support himself.

Dick threw himself into the kiss, hands sliding up Slade's arms to tangle around broad shoulders, body arching up to press tighter against him, open and willing. He could no more have told Slade no than he could breathe in hard vacuum. 

That full fledged commitment to exactly what Slade wanted was enough to win Dick a harder kiss, as Slade's tongue snaked into his mouth, tasting him, body moving just so to arouse them both through the pants they each still wore. The hand that had been in Dick's hair moved down, over the face, the neck to the chest of the man Slade had been desiring ever since he woke up to the memories of just what a man could feel like.

Not that Dick needed the help but god, he felt good... He let Slade do as he pleased, moving into his hand and with the rhythm of his body, rubbing up against him with hungry, almost pleading moves.

The younger man finally broke from the kiss, only to attack Dick's throat…using a light touch in his kisses until he got below the collar line. After that, all pretenses of gentle were gone, as wicked teeth, hard sucking kisses and strong hands explored each and every inch of Dick's chest.

Dick twisted, writhed up into the touch of Slade's mouth and hands, hands clinging to him as Slade... laid claim to him? The phrase made sense to his sex-drugged mind and he rocked up against him hungrily, roughened material of the mats against his back somehow perfectly appropriate for this, them... "Slade, oh, god..."

"Just a man, Dick. One that wants to taste you, to feel you, to have you," Slade growled softly, voice gone deeper than normal, filled with lust and barely held back need. His hands closed on the waistband of Dick's pants, and paused, as if remembering something. He knelt up, hands still right there, as he met Dick's eyes. "Tell me you're sure of this, no regrets, no matter my future?" 

Dick looked up at him, eyes bright, but serious. "I'm sure. No regrets. You want me? Have me." 

His words were met with a hungry kiss, before Slade shifted away long enough to both remove Dick's pants and his own, as well as their briefs. When he pressed against Dick this time, it was full skin-to-skin, free hand stroking Dick's side as he found the best way to move to give both of them a deeper edge to their arousal.

Dick curled around him, rocking up against his body, twisting enough to go after another kiss, hands stroking down his back, up into his hair. Slade let him know just how good it felt to let Dick run his hands up like that, bucking against his new lover with a deep desire to experience everything at once.

"Mmm," Dick purred into the kiss, fingers sliding over skin and scars with a purpose, holding on as he writhed up against him, riding the pace of those quick, hard moves. He licked his way out of Slade's mouth and down his jaw, sucking at his throat.

The growling sound that came from Slade was a pleased one, before he ran his hand over Dick's chest, pinching a nipple in passing, fingers working along the ribs until Slade's hand rested against Dick's hip.

Dick shifted against that hand, pressing into his touch, hoping for more, kissing down and out over his shoulder, hands still sliding everywhere over his back, down to cup his ass and pull him closer, move harder against him.

The younger man moved down with his mouth, hand replacing that solid pressure. As he kissed and traced scars with his tongue, he began to stroke Dick in a slow, sure way.

Dick's breath stuttered, caught, hands sliding back up onto his back, over his shoulders, into the close-crop of his hair, leg tangling high around his waist, bucking like he'd hit a live wire when Slade's mouth found one of the scars he'd left.

That reaction drew a pleased rumble, making him actively seek the other ones, the marks he could see as having made this all possible. Those marks were a claim from his future self, where this man had been his adversary, but obviously a frequent one. Now, younger and no longer separated by the divide of which chess pieces they were moving, Slade was able to make each mark up to Dick with a long, lazy, nipping kiss along each one, his hand slowly increasing both rhythm and pressure.

Dick twisted, arched and writhed under him, control something he was hanging on to by a thread as he rocked into that damned skilled touch--and he wasn't thinking about where that skill must have come from.

Slade moved again, coming back up to kiss that hungry mouth again as he let go of him, trapping Dick's shaft between them and grinding. He pulled back from the kiss, his breath coming hard and tight. "I want to feel your body shudder, Dick. I want to see your face as you come for me," he rumbled hungrily.

Dick shuddered, fought the words and control long enough to open his eyes and watch him--and the desire there was almost enough to shatter his attempts, make him buck up and his body surge... but he held off, just barely, clinging on tight. Slade's eyes narrowed, a smile playing at his lips.

"No? Maybe if I stopped…" He slowed the rhythm down as if considering doing just that.

"Slade!" the protest was almost a wail, and he wrapped around him tighter, moving against his body hungrily. 

Slade's smile grew before he started bucking against Dick's body, refusing to let himself lose control until Dick had, needing to know in some part of his brain that Dick belonged to him with all that entailed.

Dick shuddered, feeling all of that power and controlled determination... Not worth turning it into a war over, not worth the fight, not when he wanted it so badly... Not long at all before his head slammed back against the mats as his body went over the edge, clinging tight and bucking hard as he completely lost control.

"God yes!" Slade found Dick's mouth, sealing tight to it in a breath-stealing kiss as he followed his lover, body straining as his hips flexed into Dick's bucking. When they were sated, for the moment, Slade fell to the side, and pulled Dick tightly to his chest.

Dick curled around him, throwing a leg up over his lazily, curled against him. As Slade looked down at Dick, the strong, very jealous thought crossed his mind that Dick might not have been so eager for him-now, as something else, making him frown.

Dick shifted as the unhappiness radiated down through Slade's body, and shifted to look up at him with pleasure-glazed eyes. "Slade?" The younger man looked into that face, and forced his reaction to die away; Dick had done more than he needed to, and if it was some other man he had thought of, who was Slade to complain when he had enjoyed it anyway?

"Shh, Dick."

"No. What is it?" Strong, slim hand ran up his back, Dick nuzzling against his chest before he looked up again.

The blond decided to go ahead and face this firing squad. "Pretty intense reaction, Dick."

"You get to me. Always did." Dick shrugged, still pressed close." And we're not on opposite sides."

"Hmm." Slade slid a hand along that scarred back. "Did we ever?"

Dick shook his head. "Never was time... we both knew we wanted it, though. The fights were as close as we got... which wasn't that far, sometimes."

That reassured Slade on one hand, but still… "And Joey…when you said he was a friend?"

Dick blinked at him, appalled. "He was... and he wasn't my lover." //How could you think I'd...// Slade shifted them, rolling fully to his side and catching Dick's chin as he leaned in to kiss him, passion renewing quickly to know it was him that had provoked this, not some memory or resemblance. Dick kissed him back, body radiating indignation that slowly eased as Slade kept kissing him.

"Dick…please tell me you have what we need tucked away in your room," Slade breathed over Dick's ear. "Because if I don't feel you around me very soon…I'm not going to be a very happy man." He was already hardening, eagerness blending into youthful stamina.

Dick laughed, even as he shuddered at the breath and moved against him. "Yeah, no problem. Just a matter of getting there..." Without any further words, Slade was up, and had pulled Dick up from the mats, taking one long kiss, standing fully pressed together, before leading his lover back to the room.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick opened his eyes slowly, knowing something wasn't right... and ice wrapped around his heart as he saw Slade's head tossing beside him, hand tensing, new scars across his chest and... another year of age added to his face. //...I'm not enough.// He'd felt that hurt a few times, from a few people, but... this was one of the worst. //Not everyone gets told by a spell that the man they love doesn't love them back.// 

He closed his eyes again, trying to cope with the ache in his chest, get it under control before Slade woke and needed him. No matter that Slade didn't love him back, might never, the man cared about him, needed him, and he wasn't going to let him down.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick was taking advantage of his day off and Slade being gone down to the gym--nasty thorn-sharp prick of pain, pushed away and ignored in favor of the pleasant ache still through his body--to get some cleaning done before the mess made them both crazy. He'd told himself probably a thousand times that he knew better than to think Slade would commit instantly, and even mostly believed it and was back to being cheerful about the possibilities by the time his concentration was broken by a familiar set of raps at the door. He walked over, checked, and pulled it open. "Hey, Bowhead."

"Hey, Shortpants." Roy strolled in and looked around at the half cleaned apartment. "Living like a real bachelor, huh?"

Dick shut the door and tilted his head at him, "How d'ya mean?" 

"It's a mess in here," Roy said, looking around, chuckling.

"Been busy," he shrugged. "Not so much batching it as both of us going too hard to handle some of it; the city's been more nuts than usual. Don't kill me, but I pulled the inserts from one of your old armor sets for Slade... damn good thing, too." It'd still been a close damn call.

"That's not a problem." Roy frowned though, reading something, something entirely too close to the surface in Dick's body language at recalling the need to do that.

"Thanks, man," Dick said with a smile. "Want anything?" Not that Roy didn't have free rights to anything in his place, but... "What's bugging you?"

"Dick…how's the kid doing?" Roy asked it in a neutral voice, but he was watching his friend closely.

"Not so much a kid anymore, and the nights he wakes up a week older--Roy, they shipped him over on loan, kid pretty much fresh out of basic--those aren't real good." From the look on Dick's face, that was an understatement. "Rest of the time he's okay, though," quick, fond smile. "Handling it better than I would, I'm pretty sure."

The fond smile is what pricked Roy's nerves hard, made him see what he had hoped he wouldn't.

"Dick, are you sleeping with him?" he asked, trying to keep it from seeming like a demand.

"Yeah." He wasn't about to lie to Roy, not when they were finally okay again.

Roy rubbed at his face, fumed a few moments internally, tried to win the self-control…and lost. "Are you fucking insane?"

"Maybe. Help any if I tell you he started it?" He wasn't surprised at the outburst in the least, had pretty much been waiting for it.

"No…bastard's always been able to manipulate you, Dick…geeze, and here I've been worrying my head off for Dinah sleeping with him!" Roy clamped off his words and took a deep breath. "Dick, I'm terrified he's going to play you."

"Roy, damn it... right now he's five years younger than we are and he's sure as hell not playing me. Not sure what's going to happen... but it's a chance. Wish you'd been around the last couple of weeks, to see what he's like... I think you'd like him. Really."

Roy gritted his teeth. "Di does. A lot. Says he's going to be the best damn thing to hit the streets since us original Titans," he admitted. "I will not, cannot understand what the fuck you two ever saw in the man…but you're right; that kid's not him, not yet."

Dick grinned, proud and pleased and obscurely flattered, "Yeah, he just might be, though little brother would argue. Some... and I'm not going to argue about that with you again. Glad you see my point."

"Others won't like it, even if you do somehow…fuck, if you manage to keep that kid on our side, there are a lot of people who will never accept it as possible." Roy fell heavy onto the couch. "We're going to be defending him 'til we can't talk, and how's he going to take that shit?"

"Considering we're planning on passing him off as his kid? People ought to shut the hell up."

Roy considered that and grinned. "Hell yeah, works much better that way!" He shook his head. "Let's hope it works."

Dick grinned. "Here's hoping, yeah." His eyes flicked up and down his best friend, checking him over. "You look like things went okay..."

Roy grumbled at that. "Mission was fine."

"Doesn't sound like it..." Dick perched on the back of the couch next to him, tilting his head.

"Hal and I had our first major blow-up." The redhead leaned back into the couch. "Ollie called while we were on a small downtime, pissy over an argument with Di, and that got Hal started on her, and I defended…"

Dick twisted around to lay down the back of the couch, head propped up on a hand. "And you two went 'round about it... Huh. Must've been the same thing that had Di going ten rounds with Ted..."

"Probably." Roy chuckled. "Their fight wasn't even on anything sane! Only Ollie would try to tell that woman to not be active while she's healing."

Dick nearly laughed himself off the couch, shaking his head as he clutched at it. Roy started laughing too, finally shaking that stress out as he whooped loudly.

"Of all the stupid--no offense..." Dick was still laughing, clinging to the couch, trying to figure out which way he ought to give up and fall

Roy made up his mind, diving for him and crashing them both down. He started going for the ticklish places, grinning madly. "Least they're talking again!"

Dick swore blackly at him, twisting away from his hands and going for a few spots of his own. "God, whatareyou, ten?!" as he twisted around trying to reclaim the advantage he'd very much lost. "We break my coffee table you--ack!--get to replace it!"

Roy was too busy laughing, enjoying the free for all tickle to care, and when the door opened, he did not hear it. 

Slade stood there a long moment, watching his lover roll on the floor with another man, one he knew that was intimate with Dick, and waited. He did not feel any jealousy on this; Roy's place in Dick's life was too deep-seated, too much needed as a friend, and too casual a lover to infringe on Slade's perception as a threat. However, they were between him and the path to the kitchen, and he was very hungry, having missed out on his meal with Dinah when she realized she was running late.

"Ahem." He gave a polite throat clearing to get their attention.

Dick's head snapped up, found the familiar form of his lover, and he smiled brilliantly, "Hey!" He started to go back to trying to pin Roy to the floor, then realized they were in the way. "Roy, Roy hold it," gasped around laughs. "We're in the way."

"Hell," Roy said, good-naturedly, even as his mind tried to grasp the fact Slade had not shown a trace of jealousy. He moved aside, watched the man go straight to the kitchen with a faint smile at Dick. "Yeah, okay…wow."

Dick flung an arm around his shoulder, pressing close a minute. "Yeah," reading Roy's mind, and knowing Roy'd read his, too.

The redhead gave his best friend in any world a brief sideways hug, and nodded. "Good luck, Shortpants… You deserve it at least. And maybe…maybe in the grand scheme of things, he deserves a chance to do some good."

"Thanks, bowhead. Go kiss Lian for me, huh?" His eyes flicked back in the direction Slade'd headed, a grin on his lips. Roy grinned back.

"Ought to stick around and make a nuisance of myself, just for the helluvit." He shrugged. "But I've got a woman and two kids at home who haven't seen me in two and a half weeks." He stood to leave. "Take it easy, Dick."

"You too. See ya soon." He picked himself up, and went to go find Slade, calling over his shoulder. "And feed Dinah, apparently."

"I'll take care of her! Swore blind to Ollie I would!" Roy let himself out and made sure the door locked.

Slade was in the middle of cooking a rather large meal, and he gave Dick an amused look. "I see Harper made it back safely."

"Came in kind of pissed off, but yeah, he's fine." Dick shrugged a shoulder and went to lean against Slade's back. 

"Hungry for food?" Slade asked, added the proviso automatically, as his free hand was reaching back to pet Dick's hip.

Dick chuckled softly. "I could eat, yeah. Then other things?"

"I already grabbed a shower at the gym," Slade agreed, smirking as he served up two plates.

`~`~`~`~`

Dick sighed, curled a little closer to Slade's warm, solid body, and put his thoughts into better order. He'd gotten the comm. call while they were separated, agreed, filed it for later, and now they had to talk about it.

Slade stroked his hair, knowing Dick had something on his mind, but letting him get it out in his own time. 

"Going t' have to leave for a few days," Dick finally just said it, tucked against Slade's body in 'I don't like it much'.

Slade grunted; intellectually, he had known this time would come. "Be back by Thursday or no?" Thursday, the change day. Slade had gotten too accustomed to Dick being there, to snap him to the present, away from the killing fields, pulling him out of the mind of a man growing steadily immune to both the idea of death and killing.

Dick stroked down his chest. "I'm going to try. Told them I needed to be. It's the Titans, they need another set of hands." //Not going to leave you alone.//

"Twenty one this year. Legal in this day and age, right?" Slade teased. He then sighed. "If you can't make it back in time…call me. Just so I know." That was the closest the man could come to admitting he needed Dick.

"Yeah. I'll call you, if I can't get home..." Dick petted his chest again, nuzzled against him. "If I can't get back... want me to call Dinah, too?"

Slade considered. "I'd rather her than Harper or Ted," he said.

Dick nodded. "All right. If I can't get home, I'll call and tell her to swipe Roy's key. But I'm going to be home, if Raven has to jump me home." Determined Nightwing-voice.

"Don't sweat over it too much, Dick." Slade turned a kiss to his forehead. "It's just one more year."

"One more year in that hellhole," Dick replied, lifting his head to make it a proper kiss, pressed to him, hand petting gently.

Slade broke from it, eyes asking if they had time for another round. Dick nodded and kissed him again, twisting to pull Slade over him, wanting him pinning him down. Slade gladly gave into that urge, more than eager to have his lover one more time, and being more gentle than usual about it as he did.

Dick was demanding, pulling him closer, tighter, loving him fiercely though he was pinned below him, hands clinging to him everywhere, every moment. When Slade saw just how much Dick needed him, the younger man pushed his own wishes for a quiet leave taking aside, and let his more aggressive side take control. He was strong, very strong, and he was fast learning all the best ways to use that when he made love to Dick.

The more Slade pinned him, held him, loved him with all of that strength, the more Dick calmed and responded, until finally he shattered, holding tight through the aftermath, body utterly open to him. Slade held onto Dick and gave one final thrust before he was lost in pleasure too, hard, hungry kisses making marks below the costume's lines.

Dick purred, pressed close, sated and lazy, not looking at the clock yet. Slade stayed mostly on top of Dick as they rested, giving just enough weight over Dick to make him feel secure.

"Mine," he rumbled, half drowsing in he contentment.

The simple word ran through Dick's body like wildfire, and he nodded, nuzzling closer. "Yeah. Yours," he whispered back. As often happened when Slade was almost but not quite asleep, he brought his hand up to the scar just under Dick's throat, covering it.

Dick pressed into the touch, taking comfort in the gesture as he usually did, very contentedly pinned under him. 

"Be damn safe," the sleepy man added.

"Always," Dick said with a light shrug, but meant it. "I need to get moving..." his voice reluctant, as he finally looked at the clock. Slade roused enough to kiss him hard, then lifted to let him out of the bed.

Dick slid out and headed for the shower, moving with the lax-muscled lazy ease of someone that didn't really want to be vertical yet. Slade sprawled back on the bed…but Dick saw his pillow get pulled over closer , which drew an entirely-too-large grin just before he got his shower, then went to suit up and check on Wonder Girl's arrival-time. //I hate being carried by the girls...// he thought with the usual masculine disgust, and just waited on the nearby rooftop.

`~`~`~`~`

Perched in the Titans jet, actually letting Vic fly, Nightwing glanced at his watch, again, swore under his breath, and flicked a phone out of one of his boots, hitting a single button. 

Robin glanced over and arched a brow, wondering what he was up to, while Raven closed her eyes and shifted slightly farther away from her very angry/worried one-time leader, wondering why he was so upset. She regretted that things had taken so long intensely, but they still needed him. 

Dick drummed his fingers along the seat back, "Come on, pick up..." under his breath.

"You're still on mission," Slade said as he picked it up, his voice calm and neutral.

"Yeah. Still in the damn middle of it. I'm sorry..." In the cramped confines of the jet, he couldn't say most of what he wanted to, but to hell with Nightwing's detachment, not for Slade, not now.

"'Wing?" Slade's voice was crisp, very professional, very soldierly. "You do what's needed. One of these is nowhere near enough to take away what we've forged."

"You're right. It's not... okay." He grinned slightly, shaking his head at the phone, getting his head back in the game. "I do need to be here. Thanks. See you."

"See you soon," Slade said, before clicking the phone off.

He flicked the phone closed, open, and dialed again. //Be home, please. Or at Roy's. Come on.//

Dinah blinked sleepily and picked up her phone, answering it. "Yeah?" Her voice was pitched low, as she had been on the verge of deep sleep.

"Hey, Di... sorry about the time, but I need a favor..."

"Go ahead, hon. I'm awake enough."

"Steal Roy's key, and drop by my place about... five am, hang for a couple hours?"

Dinah nodded, then realized what day it was and came fully conscious. "Oh, you're not home yet…" She got up and searched for clothes.

"Yeah, and I'm not going to get home... Thanks, Di."

"Anything for you two," Dinah promised him. "I've got it." 

"You're wonderful," Dick said, weight off his shoulders. "Remind me I owe you dinner sometime this week."

"Sure. Later." She hung up, found her clothes and dressed, then went to swipe Roy's keys. She wasn't taking any chances, and she knew Dick's couch was probably pretty comfortable.

Dick dropped the phone back into his boot and calmed down, while everything finally clicked together in Raven's head and her eyes went wide, fingers pressing against her mouth. Dick noticed the movement, turned, and his eyes narrowed behind the mask. 

Robin, on the other hand, had crossed his arms and was glaring at his brother. "You got her in--" 

"Little brother, shut. up." Tim glared back at him, but silenced himself rather than air Dick's dirty laundry. Even if Raven seemed to have figured something out.

Dick flicked his fingers in 'later', and looked around to see if anyone else wanted to try and weigh in on things none of their business. Everyone else was pointedly looking away, not wanting in the middle of the brotherly fight.

`~`~`~`~` 

Dinah was at Slade's door as she heard the sound of the dreams get violent. She slipped inside, but not in arm's reach, as she knew she needed to help him now so he was not lost for too long in the memories. They had discussed this earlier in the week, part of Slade's preparations for worst-case scenario.

"Slade. Slade, you need to wake up!"

The wrong, utterly out-of-place voice snapped him awake and upright, pale despite himself, reaching for a weapon that wasn't there, scanning the room until his eyes found the source, and the disconnect between memory and reality triggered. //Dinah. 2006. Not back there...// He took a deep breath, another. "Morning, sister..." he said once he had control of his voice, trying to shake the memories of deep-black operations.

//So hard to see him like this, hear that word and know he means it.// Dinah approached slowly, hands where he could see them, especially the one in the light cast. "Can I sit?"

He scanned her, saw the knowledge in her eyes, and nodded, shifting his legs out of the way for her.

Dinah sat on the end of the bed, curling her legs under her, and cocking her head to one side. "Need to talk?"

"Probably. Do I want to?" He twitched a shoulder slightly.

"Yeah. I can imagine." She shook her head. "I didn't go through anything near that and I still don't like to talk about my training over there."

His eyes darkened slightly at that reminder, and he nodded. "I noticed it still sounds like the hell it was," he agreed. "The entire region..." He shook his head, more than slightly shamed by the proof of failure. She reached out to him, her hand catching his as she shifted.

"Whether or not we should have been there, whether or not we did not do what we needed…it's not YOUR fault. And, Slade Wilson, the fact you're still rejecting what those years did to you…shows me even more than I already knew that you are a very honorable man."

"You and Dick both... believe that so strongly," Slade said softly. He'd believed that, held to it so long... It was oddly good to know that he had apparently continued to do so, but he sometimes wondered how... Especially with the newest memories in his head. 

"When I first met you," Dinah began. "You were a man who, once your word was given, could not be swayed into breaking it. What you did was strictly business, most of the time. And you did take a lot of contracts that had people we privately admitted should be on 'Better-Off-Dead' lists."

"Hmm." Slade nodded. That sounded like something he could... almost... see himself doing. She squeezed his hand, her face gentle.

"Dick's known you far longer than me. And better, I have no doubt." She laughed softly. "And it drives my Boy-o crazy that I tend to favor Dick's opinion of you."

"Harper. I've noticed he doesn't like this... Can't say I blame him much."

"Hey!" That made her move closer to him, gently punching his arm. "Not allowed to use that tone, mister." She then wrapped her arm around him as best as she could. "I'm in your corner. So is Dick. So is Roy, now, because you make Dick happy. Ted believes in you too, making the most of this new life you got."

Slade wrapped an arm down around her waist, careful of her broken wing. "Fairly full corner... some might call that an unfair advantage." Her good humor helped more in pulling him away from that, from too-sharp memories and bitter thoughts.

"Gotta say, never thought I'd really look on you like a kid brother, Slade," she teased him. "But I'm happy with it that way."

That drew a mildly insulted look, then a slow nod. "Seems to work."

"So, want to go spar, or think I'd whip your tail again?" she asked him, squeezing him again.

"Let's go. And we'll see about that." She slipped off the bed, and turned, offering her hand to him with her impish sense of humor. 

"Let's."

He let her pull him up, amused, and headed for the mats. No sense in going all the way to Ted's gym, after all.

`~`~`~`~`

When Dick got home, the next day, it was to find Slade on the couch, Dinah on one shoulder, Sin laying on her, and Lian curled into Slade's lap, a movie on that was Lian friendly.

Dick padded over quietly, draping himself along the back of the couch, lips brushing the back of Slade's neck.

"I acquired a nest of chicks," Slade said in amusement. All three girls were asleep, or at least half dozing in Sin's case. At his voice, Dinah roused, saw Dick, and smiled lazily.

"Hmm, I'll be taking the girls home now." She twisted, coaxed Sin fully awake, then took Lian from Slade.

Dick smiled slightly. "I think you set a fox to guard the hen house, Di..." amusement in his low voice. "No need to rush off, Di..."

"No, hon…you and Slade deserve all the time you can get," she said, her eyes trying to pass a warning to him while her voice stayed steady. "We'll see you later." She headed for the door, hoping Dick was awake enough to catch it.

He read her warning easily, and waited until Dinah was out the door to pick his head up, roll over the couch, and drop his head into Slade's lap, looking up at him.

"Good mission?" the other man asked, as Dick saw the new lines of a new year.

"Not a hard mission. Just slow and frustrating. They did need me, though." He tilted his head. "How bad was it?"

"Bad enough, but we made it through." Slade shifted, so he could pull Dick against him and lay flat on the couch. "I've done some research," he added. "Trying to gauge just how…ugly it might get."

Dick crawled up over him, laying against him, propped up enough to look into his eyes. "You found the war crimes lists?"

"Yes and no. Mostly…rumored reports of atrocities, when and where." Slade's eyes were hooded. "Based on the most recent things I remember…I was on those ghost squads." 

Dick nuzzled against him, "And I would put money on that you fought them about it." Slade did not try to correct Dick; instead he started kissing his lover, hand moving over his chest.

"Tired?"

"Not that tired. Slept on the flight, Rae was too wiped to 'port me back."

"Good." Slade shifted them both one more time, managing to keep Dick in his arms as he rose from the couch and headed for the bedroom. At twenty-one he had his full height, and was nearly as muscular as Dick remembered.

Dick yelped, shook his head, and tucked his legs in close, arms going up around his neck. "I ought to protest this..." idle tone.

"You could." Slade's smirk said it wouldn't get him far.

`~`~`~`~`

It was bound to happen eventually. They had made it nearly three months without interference, thanks to some subtle and not so subtle help from the minds of Harper, Lance, and Grant. Slade had gone from ten to twenty one, and was two days away from twenty-two when the knock came on Dick's door. Slade was gone, a late training match with Dinah, who had gotten rid of her cast in exchange for a very light support brace.

//Who the...?// Dick headed for the door, looked out, and froze. //Shit. It's Bruce.// The apartment didn't exactly look like only one person was living in it... //Oh well...// He swung open the door. "Hey, Bruce."

"Dick." The man stepped in and let Dick close the door behind him, noting the clutter. "How are you?" //Be polite. Remember, he is an adult. If he chose a partner, it was not his duty to tell you…though he should have.// Alfred's words echoed in his head, keeping the bat at bay, for now.

Dick flashed a smile at him. "I'm doing good... I missed New York, I'm finding. What brings you by?" 

"Rumors, actually." Bruce returned the bright smile with a small one of his own. "I could have called, but I needed to be sure you were truly fine." 

Dick stepped out of the way, inviting him in with a turn of his hand. "Which rumors?" He rolled his eyes, "I'm fine, Bruce. All healed, you know that, and doing pretty well for myself." Bruce walked over and chose to use the little used chair beside the couch.

"You've taken on a partner." The voice remained Bruce's, not falling to the deeper range of Batman.

//Oh fuck...// Dick stilled, mind racing, but he didn't lie to this man. "We're still ironing out the details. But yeah."

"I…see." Two small words that implied a deep control over whatever had been desired as a retort to the situation. 

"It's complicated, Bruce, and it's my life. Secrets are staying secret, I swear it. Okay, mainly because he's not that interested, but," he shrugged slightly. "Point is they are."

"I can understand that part," the older man said in a low tone. "I even think that…" His voice trailed off as the door was being unlocked. 

Dick turned to look towards the door, entire posture brightening as he smiled. "Hey. We've got company. Okay, I've got company."

"You are going to introduce us?" Bruce said, in his level best Gotham socialite voice.

"Dick?" The vaguely familiar voice calling his son's name preceded the entry of a man who looked astonishingly like a Titan who was long since dead, but older, or even the man's father a few decades younger.

"Yes, Bruce, I did intend to." He tried to get his feet under him, preparing for this verbal tap dance. "Slade, my adoptive father, Bruce Wayne, Gotham's most eligible. Bruce... Slade Wilson."

Bruce came to his feet, blanking his face as he reacted inwardly. //Bastard son? No, they're reacting to each other…the same damn way they always did…Dick, what in hell…There is no damn way I'll stand for this.// "Wilson."

Slade stiffened. Both Dick's body language and the use of his last name set his teeth on edge toward this man invading his space, upsetting his household. "Wayne."

//Oh, and he was worried I was going to blow cover?// Dick coughed, not softly. "Both of you chill, all right?" Slade took his eyes from Bruce long enough to read Dick's posture again, before walking directly over to his lover and standing behind him, arms casually draped over the shorter man's shoulders. He did not say a word, but he did show a strongly protective streak toward Dick in his posture.

//Mine. Stop making him upset.//

//Oh, fuuuuuck. Slade, some days... piss off my lover, piss off my father. piss off my lover, piss off my father... Sorry, Bruce.// He leaned back slightly, letting Slade take a little of his weight. "You know, I'm not a tree," in an annoyed, though vaguely amused voice. 

Bruce kept trying to remind himself that the Gotham socialite would have no reason to know this man's name, they'd never done business... but the corporate shark side of his personality was well aware of the name. "Dick, that name sounds pretty familiar, but I had the impression it belonged to someone... older..."

Slade sighed, looked faintly disgusted and decided to speak for himself. "I'm not going to beat around the bushes all night, when I just want to relax before we have to go out," the man said. "Slade Wilson Senior was my father; I was the product of his affair on a mission, and only recently was contacted by a banker handling his affairs to inform me of this," he lied with a perfect posture, tone, and face. "The bankers had not heard from him in some time, and in accordance with their instructions, contacted me with proof of who I was. I had possessed the name, but no credentials, as mother died when I was young. There, my sordid history is out." 

Dick grinned, vaguely amused, and turned slightly in his arms, "Have I ever mentioned that tact is not one of your strong suits?" 

//Interesting load of lies, logical enough to fool most people... And I have to pretend to be... What did you pull, Deathstroke?// "Well I guess that makes sense." he said, trapped by the posture of the dilettante into letting most of this slide... "I think further concerns of mine--and I do have a few, Dick, should probably be addressed privately between my son and I. I just dropped by to check on him a minute, as I was in the city anyway."

"I'd been looking forward to meeting you," Slade said, another lie and one he let show. "And Dick, love, you really ought to have called and told me; I could have picked up dinner for us all. I'm not sure I pulled out enough to cook three meals." He was making it explicitly clear he did not like the idea of a private meeting, while ramming home the fact this was all his and Bruce did not belong.

Dick spun around completely, //you did NOT just!// staring up at him with an utterly shocked, half-appalled expression, shaking his head. "You were probably already on your way back. Bruce sometimes forgets minor details like, oh, calling ahead to warn me he's going to drop by..." A little poison in the words tossed over his shoulder. //I. am. going. to. KILL. you later,// his eyes blazed up at him. 

Bruce shook his head. "Can't be staying, I have a dinner meeting with some of the execs, we went on break for a while, but I'll be tied up til late..." Lie, but if he didn't get out of this apartment very shortly, things were going to get very, very interesting... and not in ways that would be good for his civilian identity. Not if that actually was Wilson standing there... given the voice, the stature, and the posture, there wasn't much doubt of it.

"Please, come back when you have more time," Slade said in his most polite tones ever. //If I never lay eyes on you again, it will be too soon.//

Bruce nodded. "Dick, I'll call later..." 

"All right, Bruce. Talk to you then." He didn't think he had a chance of Slade letting him go, so he let Bruce let himself out, and listened for the click of the lock, Bruce's shadow going away from the door before he glared up at Slade, snarling, "What the fuck was that about?!"

"If he wasn't going to treat me with respect, I wanted him away from you," Slade growled right back, straightening up, but keeping his hands on Dick, drawing him tight to his chest. Ever fiber of his body was screaming 'mine!' at Dick.

Dick rolled his eyes, but pressed in close to him, "He's my father, he's got some small right to be pissed when I do something he sees as stupid... and that little disaster is going to make for hell to pay, thank you so..." He curled into the hold, though, enjoying the possessive hold more than he probably should, and trying to get used to the unfamiliar feeling of someone willing to protect him from Bruce--not that he damned well needed it!

"He's your teacher, and it was that I resented, Dick! The bastard's got no right to tell you how to live your life! I saw it in his eyes, in the way he refused to cut the bullshit when I gave him my own pack of lies." Slade turned Dick in his arms, to meet the other man's eyes. "He had no intention of listening to you about me." Slade leaned in, not knowing how to say the emotions in his eyes, other than to kiss Dick hard. "And that was just going to upset you more," he added after the kiss.

Dick stiffened a moment at "teacher" on Slade's lips about Bruce, wondered where and how he'd given that away, but done was done and he didn't have the energy or will to deny it, and the possessive anger in Slade's expression made him shiver hungrily, press up into the kiss, shaking his head once he pulled away. "I ought to go try and deal with some of this..." He didn't look, or feel, like he had any interest in moving away.

"You stay with me, tonight," Slade insisted. "Don't you dare go play his game, let him hit what we share." His hands roamed hungrily over Dick's back, eventually cupping his lover's ass and pulling him up into his arms for closer contact. "We're partners now; you said so, I accepted it, accepted you and the future you want, over what is my destiny! If he can't pull his head out of his ass to consider it…" He let his voice trail off. 

Dick crawled up him, curling around him, all hunger and grace, trying not to shudder at the sound of Slade's voice saying what he'd wanted so desperately to hear, praying that was enough to throw the fine print of that curse into effect as he arched up and kissed him. "All right. Let me call Dinah, warn her it's incoming, and I'm all yours..."

"Call her while I start," Slade rumbled, carrying Dick back to their bedroom, mouth fixed on Dick's throat possessively.

Dick twisted, trusting Slade not to drop him, and pulled his phone. //C'mon, Di, c'mon...//

"Hi Dick, what can I do for you?" He could hear the sounds of the gym still in her background.

"He decided to drop by. Word's out. Sorry, trouble might be heading your way, and can you block our other favorite redhead?" His voice was amazingly steady, given what Slade was doing.

What Slade was doing right now was getting clothing out of the way, none too subtly, having dropped Dick onto their bed, and kissing every part of his lover he could. 

"I can handle that. I'll even handle him." Her voice was grim. "Is he okay?" she asked in reference to Slade.

"Y-yeah, he's fine... 'bout had an alpha-male br~awl in my living room but he's fine. bye Dinah, thanks..."

Her laughter as she hung up told him she knew just what was happening. As Dick put the phone aside, Slade claimed his mouth and pinned him, hands and body saying everything he could not verbalize.

He flushed slightly, tossed the phone over off the bed and pressed tighter against him, hands stroking down broad shoulders and hard muscle hungrily, letting Slade have everything he wanted, hearing what his soldier-lover couldn't stand to say... //I love you, too. Yes, yours,// he said with his own body, submitting to the possession... He still wasn't completely certain why Bruce had flipped Slade's trigger so brutally hard, but he wasn't arguing with this half of the results!

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah did not even have to go looking for Bruce; she recognized the guise he was using from a case a long time ago, from a time when things between them had been close. She passed around the gym, telling everyone to clear to the front when he decided to go abuse a speed bag in the back.

Abuse was definitely the right term, anger and adrenaline blazing through his veins as he considered how best to go about learning the truth of the situation, and how best to get Dick out of it before whatever had happened backfired farther on his eldest son. He kept hearing that casual endearment turned Dick's direction from Slade and it almost frightened him that the relationship had twisted in that direction, no matter the canny bastard's apparent age.

Dinah slipped into the room, very much Ted Grant's favorite niece in the fact she was wearing his gym clothes line, a towel around her neck, athletic tape worked around the light support brace to keep it firm around her healing arm. She did not interfere, merely waited for him to acknowledge her as she knelt on a nearby mat, calling on all her reserves. 

//Slade, this Slade deserves this. Keep him from his future, let Dick be happy, have to get Bruce DOWN!//

"Yes, Dinah?" after a few long moments, lightening hits at the bag never slowing.

"Care to talk?" She kept her voice light, inviting, as if she were merely the concerned friend, even as she wondered just when she became as manipulative as her partner.

"...You. knew." The realization had taken only a moment, and the depth of his angry frustration almost shocked him. //Did Oracle, as well? Surely not.//

"Not initially." She came to her feet in one fluid motion. "Office?"

He slowed the bag, stopped it finally, and followed her. Whatever information she had, he wanted.

She let him in, then latched the door before taking Ted's chair at the desk. She met Bruce's eyes clearly, settling on a policy of truth. "At first, I was strictly doing Roy a favor, keeping you tangled up in Gotham. I thought, at the time, that maybe you and Dick had quarreled, because Roy's had me run interference that way before."

Bruce's eyes narrowed at her. "Interesting choice of tactics." //Note. Check for secondary motives at any time dealing with her.// "...This has been going on that long, and none of you saw fit to mention that somehow Deathstroke is living with Nightwing? When did you find out, and who else knows?"

"I found out after I was hurt, that night you, me, and Selina tangled with The Ventriloquist's gang," she said. "They already had Slade caught up in their training. Ted, Roy, and Dick, though the hands on was mostly Ted and Dick. Then I got pulled in." She thought about it, trying to remember. "They said he was ten when he showed up. I met him when he was seventeen. It's been almost five weeks."

"Ted's involved? What could possibly have persuaded him this was a wise idea? ...wait. He's regaining age at... a year a week? What happened, to cause something like this?" //And is the age merely physical, or mental as well?//

"Dick told me he consulted Jason Blood," Dinah said casually. "Apparently, Deathstroke ran afoul of Klarion the Witchboy." She shared a look with Bruce; they both had been among the victims of Klarion's biggest effort to date. "Every Thursday, Slade goes to sleep, and when he wakes up, he has every memory, every mark of the year he gained." She looked haunted as she said that. "Since his seventeenth, Dick has made sure to be there, right at hand. I had to fill in this last week…and Bruce, if I had been willing to call it a foolish hope prior to that, I changed my mind when that man woke up this week."

//Jason, it would have killed you to let me know?// Bruce put that away to discuss with Jason later, and tilted his head slightly at her phrasings, "Call what a foolish hope, Dinah... and why did this last week change your mind?"

"Like Ted, I wasn't going to hold 'Stroke's crimes against the half-grown boy," she said. "But, deep down, I was preparing for the fight we would have, to take him down when he woke up as Terminator instead of Slade Wilson." She shook her head. "I don't know, if it's because of the bond Dick forged, or the fact we're all there for him, or just…just being able, if he needs to, to talk about the hell he experienced in Asia, but…he resents what he was. He rejects it, every Friday morning, and I saw that. I saw he loathed the actions in his memories, watched him hold onto the present and shove the past away."

"You think he can change?" Disbelief in what was certainly Batman's voice. "Maybe at this point... but he will apparently keep getting older. It's madness, Dinah."

"Maybe it is. But we have to try. It's what we do." She leaned across the desk, throwing more emotion into her appeal to him. "And you need to join that hope, or at least stay out of its way. Because Dick's very much head over heels, and that's the thing we're all counting on now. We're pushing for them, to beat the odds, because Slade makes Dick happy…complete, even. And it is far from one-sided. Since whatever happened to get them started, I don't think Slade's looked sideways at a woman, not even me, and he had been trying hard."

Bruce's lips thinned. "An interesting fact, but how long will it last, with him remembering more and more of that history, Dinah? I can't support this, not when it's going to lead to Dick being hurt again." His eyes darkened. He'd seen Dick hurt too many times to be anything resembling pleased at his son deliberately inviting this much heartbreak. "The best I can offer is to stay out of the way until it falls down around your heads." //And assistance in picking up the pieces.// "When it does, call."

"If." Dinah refused to believe they would lose, no matter what. "But thank you, Bruce. We've made our plans, Roy, me, and Ted. If he turns out wrong…we're taking him down hard." She cocked her head to one side. "I think I should tell you this…Roy trusts him with Lian."

That... was practically stunning, given how protective Harper was of his little girl. He shook his head slightly, finding the entire situation dangerous in the extreme, unwise besides, and personally distressing, given how much this was going to hurt Dick. "Surprising, given Harper's usual stance."

"That's what I thought. Until I spent a night curled up with a Disney marathon, both girls and him…with Lian refusing to budge out of his arms." She was not above using every emotional pull she could; if Slade did fully reject his future, there was no way he was going to tolerate living under suspicion for the rest of Dick's life.

Bruce shot her an expression of utter disbelief, shaking his head slightly. "Disturbing image."

"When things settle, and we say he's still ours…think about Dick, and then try to get to know him," Dinah said, softly. "Please?"

Bruce nodded once, though reluctantly. "If it happens, I'll see." 

"That's all we can ask." Dinah didn't even try to stand up, feeling very weak in the knees. She had never had to face off with Bruce so long, so intensely in the past. 

He nodded once. "Anything else I ought to know?"

"Selina had no idea I was playing her into your path," Dinah said. "And I'd appreciate it, personally, if you don't sic Oracle on them immediately."

That... eased some of his frustration. At least slightly. "No, she's not likely to be happy with you," Bruce said, finding some slight amusement in that fact. Babs, at least, would side with him on the... lack of sanity involved with this entire matter. He agreed with not holding the man's choices against the innocent child…but innocent was one thing Slade Wilson had not remained very long. "I'll be in the city another day or two," he told her, before turning to leave.

"If you need me, I'm living with Roy, and working here." It crossed her mind to make one more offer, one that would appeal to a man who liked intelligence on his enemies. "He comes every morning, just about, to spar with me. If you wanted to observe."

Bruce nodded once. "That... would be interesting. I may make the time."

"Thank you, Bruce." She waited until he had walked out, then leaned her hand against her forehead, and heaved a huge sigh of relief.

He'd left the door open so that everyone could see she was fine--Ted's gym always had at least a few overprotective teens or twenty-somethings, and he was in no particular mood to be nice about making them leave him alone. He was pleased with the amount of information he'd gotten...though much less so with its content.

They watched him go, having accepted the idea he was a former student of Ted's, but relieved that Dinah was fine. One came by and pulled the office door shut for her, just as she was calling Roy to come get her.

"Yo, Di--Lian NO!--nah?"

"Put my girl on the phone, while you come get me." Her voice sounded exhausted.

"Where are you, are you okay?" //She was supposed to be at the gym...//

"Ted's gym…just finished dealing with him. Apparently your best friend had a visitor tonight." Dinah was literally shaking like a leaf; the emotional storm of what a young Slade Wilson meant in so many lives catching up to her.

"Oh, boy. Okay. I'll be right there." Sound of the phone moving, distance-muffled, "Here, Lian. Talk to Aunt Dinah. Sin, keep an eye on her." 

"Aunt Dinah? You okay?"

"Fine, doll baby. Just a little too tired to try and walk home tonight." She smiled at hearing her little girl; staying at Roy's had been good for her and Sin and Lian. "So, what were you doing when I called?"

"Nothing..." butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth tone.

"Mmm-hmm…and what would Sin tell me?" she asked sweetly.

Lian shrugged, "I dunno. She's still kind of... different."

"Lian…tell me why daddy was fussing, so I know if I should still take you shopping with us tomorrow night." Dinah laid her head on the desk, letting Lian focus her off the problems they all had.

"He left some stuff out, I was moving it." Put-upon little-girl voice.

"Hero stuff?" Memories of Lian playing with guns before Dinah and Roy had 'chatted' came to mind.

"Yeah." Lian shrugged. "Sin nearly tripped over it, we were playing tag."

"I'll say something to Daddy for you, baby girl." 

"I did not almost trip," indignant voice. 

That made Dinah laugh softly. "You two be very good and careful," she said.

Lian giggled. "We are."

"I love you both." She was seriously considering moving here from Metropolis, since her attempt to live in Star City had been…strained. And Metropolis lacked family, despite Oracle's nearness.

"We know, Aunt Dinah. I do, anyway. Wanna tell Sin that?"

"Only if you promise to go put a movie on and sit still until we get home," Dinah told her.

"Sit still? Aunt Dinah..."

"Yes, Dart…and if you do, I'll make cookies when I get there." Dinah would have sworn Lian was a speedster child at times.

There was a very put-upon silence from the girl on the other end. "Here's Sin."

Dinah kept Sin on the phone just a few minutes, listening to her tell what had happened. By the time Sin hung up, Roy was arriving, to see the very pale aftermath of having to face Bruce on such an emotionally charged subject.

He'd let himself into the office, and frowned at how she looked. "Di... are you all right?"

"Fine, Roy…just remind me never ever ever to volunteer to be the one to keep Bruce in check again."

"Sure, I can do that... What happened; he come by here to let off steam?" He reached out for her worriedly.

She shifted from her chair into his arms, letting him take her weight as she clung to him. "Yes. And I waited until he was ready to talk, then tried to make him see there was a chance." She sighed. "He is going to back away, and offered to clean up when it all blows up in our faces."

"...Who slipped Prozac in his Batcoffee? Go, Alfred," Roy joked, holding her up. "Good of him."

"Let's go home. I need the kids, and maybe a phone call with your ol' man."

"Alright, Di. Let's go." He slid his arm down around her waist, taking her weight, and waited for her to move. She walked slow and steady, leaning on him.

`~`~`~`~`

Slade woke up, the pleasant feeling of a satisfying night still rippling through him. He looked briefly at the clock, then his sleeping lover, and smiled. The smile faded, as he realized it was Friday, and there were no new memories in his mind. A glance at his chest, his arms showed no new scars. 

"Dick."

Dick moved sleepily, draping himself further across his lover, not awake enough to notice anything. Slade's pleased rumble preceded a hand running through Dick's hair. "Dick, we need to talk."

Dick opened his eyes slowly at that, blinking up at him. "Slade? What?" He nuzzled against him.

"Notice anything?" Slade waited for the sleep to clear his mind.

Dick shook the sleep out of his eyes, looked up at him, and his jaw slowly dropped. "It's Friday... you didn't age... oh, my god." He wrapped tight, tight around him, and buried his face against Slade's neck, clinging.

The younger man let him…for a full minute, before unwrapping him gently and pushing up against the headboard. "Explain how." 

Dick looked up at him, curled close. "Jason told me 'He will age until he meets his fated age…or he chooses to belong as he is, with one who catches his heart' when he was here." He shrugged slightly. "And this is where I point out that you started things, and I was trying to be good."

Slade considered, a wry smile slowly forming on his lips. "I started it? You were radiating what you wanted. Worse than Wintergreen ever looked my way," he teased, but his hands were touching, reminding himself and Dick just what they had.

"I was trying to be good," Dick repeated, nuzzling up against him again, pressing into his hands. "And yes, you started it... or at least, I wasn't going to." He firmly locked down the trace of possessiveness Slade's words drew--he owed Wintergreen, in more ways than one.

"Hmm." Slade drew Dick up, kissing him with a statement of intent. There would be no sparring today…and maybe not any meals, as they celebrated averting what Slade had suspected would be the breaking point. Now, he could just concentrate on being Dick's partner…on the streets, in life, and at home.

`~`~`~`~`

Slade and Dick had only just gotten up for the day, unable to ignore stomachs any longer, when they heard a knock. Dick went to get the door, and muttered, "Speak of the Devil, literally..." to warn Slade, then pulled the door open. "Jason. Been a few weeks. What brings you by?"

"Etrigan does, to be honest," Blood said with a small smile. "As you know Dick, he was…mirthful when we lasted parted."

Slade merely watched the magic user suspiciously.

"I did notice that, yes... and wondered why..." 

"He sought out the author of your redemption, Mister Wilson, and made a small bet. A bet that has now been won; you may both be assured, there will be no more aging of a magical nature." He got serious. "The bet that was won…the prize, I should say, is that I may offer you the knowledge you do not possess, the full memories…without the aging or physical devastation."

Dick firmly shut his mouth, watching Jason rather than Slade. He was afraid, horribly afraid, that Slade would say yes, and he would lose them to the half-century of memories of war and death and the long years as a mercenary, memories of their fights, and certain deaths... but it was Slade's choice and life. He struggled to keep his posture neutral, not wanting to give himself away.

Slade did not look toward Dick, either, not needing to, to know just what had to be going through his mind. He wanted the first hand knowledge, wanted to know the people who would come hunting him in due time, wanted to know about those three children, their mothers. He wanted to see Dick as he first had, to know what about the boy had drawn the man to him.

But he wanted Dick, wanted this life, did not want to see how his government had used him to commit murder after murder in a country that had been completely irrelevant to their way of life in the long run.

"No." One simple word pushed it all away; no information was worth the loss of the life so many people had struggled to help let him have. 

Jason Blood smiled, and felt the Demon grow more intrigued by the man. "As you would." He tipped his head to them both and withdrew, leaving the couple to their future.

Dick went to him, walking backwards until he pressed back against him, then turned to press his face into Slade's chest, arms finally wrapping around him. Slade tucked his chin over Dick, holding him tight, not saying another word. They were together, a fresh start, and Slade would only kill to defend what was his.

"Was afraid you'd say yes..." Dick said softly after a few moments.

"Tempting, but not more than you," the younger man promised him.

"Flatterer. ...There's a way you can get most of it," Dick offered after a moment of thought. Slade stopped running his hands over Dick's backside.

"How?"

"Wintergreen spent most of his time after you were out of the service keeping a series of journals about you... I think he intended to turn them into a book at some point. The originals were destroyed in the explosion, but he'd made electronic copies, and gave one to Rose. It's not like first-hand information, but... he did know you best."

"Did he ever," Slade murmured, considering as he leaned back on the counter. "We can worry about that another day."

Dick nodded. "I think we were after food, before we got interrupted?"

"Food, and then bed." A smirk traced his lips as he patted Dick on the ass possessively.

"Here I thought I was the insatiable one..." Dick said with a grin, amused and pleased by Slade's willingness to, well, flirt. And be possessive.

`~`~`~`~`

Dinah set the table for six, pleased that Dick and Slade had agreed to come eat with them. She had not had the pleasure of training Slade the past two mornings, which had worried her considering there would have been a year gain.

But the minute the pair walked in, and she laid eyes on Slade, her heart hammered hard; she couldn't find any changes in that weathered face, could not see a single new scar on his bare arms. She flicked her eyes then to Dick, and read the solid satisfaction in his body language.

"You broke the magic?" she asked, a little confused, a lot hopeful, and very curious.

"Not... broke. Fulfilled... Klarion got a little too cutesy with his spellcasting." Dick grinned, amused.

"Sorry, sister, but I guess I get to stay too young for your tastes," Slade said, perfectly straight-faced. 

"Oh you…who said that?" She flew to both of them, hugging their necks. "We're good then?"

"Better," Slade promised, flashing a bold confidence and arrogant pride in his partner as he pulled Dick back to him after the small woman's hugs.

Dick grinned, amused, and didn't admit to being the source or not. "Yeah, Di, we're good."

"'Bout time," Roy grumbled, coming in. "Can we eat now?"

That led to an avalanche of little girl hugs on the two arrivals, as the odd family settled in for their night.

Dick scooped up Lian to cuddle her, then grinned over at Roy. "Yes, bowhead. We can eat--long as you promise me Dinah cooked!"

"Gotta earn her keep somehow," came out of the redhead's mouth. Dinah chose to ignore it as she served, entirely too pleased by the way events had played out.

fini


	2. Coda

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Snapshot of after

Dick was still giddy when he and Slade would work the nights of New York. Slade had not shown any interest in returning to merc work, nor had he fully read all the journals Rose had delivered. 

Rose was coping halfway decently with the idea of her dad being just a handful of years older than her. That made things easier for Dick. 

But it was Slade himself that truly made every night so much better for living.

Dick was wrapped up in that man's love, and knew, no matter what magic began this, it was all about them now.


End file.
